The diagnostic value of grey-scale inversion technique in chest radiography.

Purpose: We investigated whether the additional use of grey-scale inversion technique improves the interpretation of eight chest abnormalities, in terms of diagnostic performance and interobserver variability.

Material And Methods: A total of 507 patients who underwent a chest computed tomography (CT) examination and a chest radiography (CXR) within 24 h were enrolled. CT was the standard of reference.

European lung cancer screening: valuable trial evidence for optimal practice implementation.

Lung cancer screening (LCS) by low-dose computed tomography is a strategy for secondary prevention of lung cancer. In the last two decades, LCS trials showed several options to practice secondary prevention in association with primary prevention, however, the translation from trial to practice is everything but simple. In 2020, the European Society of Radiology and European Respiratory Society published their joint statement paper on LCS.

Validity of epicardial fat volume as biomarker of coronary artery disease in symptomatic individuals: Results from the ALTER-BIO registry.

Background: To determine if an increased epicardial fat volume (EFV) is associated with coronary artery disease (CAD) in individuals with symptoms of cardiovascular (CV) disease.

Methods: Coronary Computed Tomographic Angiography (CCTA), demographic and clinical variables of 1344 individuals were retrieved: semi-automated measurements for EFV and coronary artery calcifications (CAC) were obtained. Individuals were grouped into three categories according to the presence of CAD, resulting in absent (CAD), non-obstructive (CAD) or obstructive (CAD) disease-groups.

Crowdsourcing pneumothorax annotations using machine learning annotations on the NIH chest X-ray dataset.

Pneumothorax is a potentially life-threatening condition that requires prompt recognition and often urgent intervention. In the ICU setting, large numbers of chest radiographs are performed and must be interpreted on a daily basis which may delay diagnosis of this entity. Development of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to detect pneumothorax could help expedite detection as well as localize and potentially quantify pneumothorax.

Effectiveness of a Patient Education Class to Enhance Knowledge about Lung Cancer Screening: a Quality Improvement Evaluation.

Best practices to facilitate high-quality shared decision-making for lung cancer screening (LCS) are not well established. In our LCS program, patients are first referred to attend a free group education class on LCS, taught by designated clinician specialists, before a personal shared decision-making visit is scheduled. We conducted an evaluation on  the effectiveness of this class to enhance patient knowledge and shared decision-making about LCS.

Posttreatment surveillance PET/CT for HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancer.

Background: Surveillance positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET/CT) is commonly used for treatment assessment of radiation therapy in head and neck cancer. However, human papillomavirus-associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (HPV+OPSCC) patients represent a unique subpopulation, for which the utility of surveillance PET/CT has not been well studied.

Methods: In this retrospective chart review comprising 233 HPV+OPSCC patients, we evaluated surveillance PET/CT for diagnostic accuracy, downstream clinical impact, and survival.

Evidence-Based Workflows for Thyroid and Parathyroid Surgery.

A need exists to reduce care variations by standardizing the practice of thyroid and parathyroid surgery. During the course of a year, a task force developed algorithms representing decision points and workflows based on American Thyroid Association guidelines and three internal studies of surgical practices in the Northern and Southern California Regions of Kaiser Permanente conducted in collaboration with Health Information Technology Transformation & Analytics (HITTA).