“‘Normal’ is one of the most powerful words a radiologist can use.”
– Curtis P. Langlotz, professor of radiology, Stanford University
After I used “clinically correlate” thrice in a row in my report, the attending radiologist asked, “How would you feel if the referring clinician said on the requisition for the study ‘correlate with images’? When you ask them to clinically correlate, you’re reminding them to do their job.”
I had been a radiology resident for six months — too soon to master radiology but not too soon to master radiology’s bad habits. I had acquired several habits, tics to be precise. These tics included saying “seminal vesicles are unremarkable,” which I stated remorselessly on the CT of the abdomen in males, even if the clinical question was portal vein thrombosis, sending, I suspect, several young men to existential despair. But the tic that really got under my attending’s skin was “cannot exclude.” The attending was Curtis P. Langlotz, the author of The Radiology Report, a book about writing effective radiology reports.
Ubiquitous in clinical care, and sometimes parody, radiology reports are enigmatic. What’s most striking about radiology reports is their variability. Reports vary in length, tone, precision and frequency of disclaimers. Reports vary in strength of recommendations for further imaging.
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