Impact of a Structured Report Template on the Quality of CT and MRI Reports for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Diagnosis

How high is the inter-observer reproducibility in the LIRADS reporting system?

“…Studies that investigate the effectiveness of LIRADS in clinical practice are limited [7][8][9][10]. One of the questions that we think is important in this regard is: What is the level of alignment between observers in evaluations made with LIRADS?…”

Structured Reporting in Clinical Routine

“…For example, in oncology, there have been significant improvements in the quality of reports and the communication of findings. Therefore, it was able to be shown that the use of a report template based on defined criteria produced more complete and precise reports in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) than conventional free-text reports [19]. Similar results have also been seen in the case of rectal and pancreatic cancer.…”

Structured radiology reporting on an institutional level—benefit or new administrative burden?

“…This seems very understandable considering that conventional free-text reports often miss relevant negatives, so that a surgeon might be unsure whether or not a certain case is resectable if, for example, the vascular involvement of the superior mesenteric artery is not explicitly mentioned. Comparable results have also been published for other oncological entities such as hepatocellular carcinoma, 12 rectal cancer, 13 as well as for nononcological conditions such as pulmonary embolism 14 and multiple sclerosis, 15 among others. In all cases the respective study showed that structured reports contained significantly more relevant information and that clinicians had a marked preference for structured radiology reports.…”