Unused radiological findings on data storage media: “What an intellectual loss”

Many representatives of the statutory health insurance system believe that the primary (“conventional medicine”) and secondary healthcare markets (“complementary medicine,” “medical wellness”) differ in the particularly high efficiency of the primary healthcare market. However, radiologist Prof. Dr., among others, knows that this is far from the case.

Dr. Werner Golder (Avignon, France). In a commentary published in the journal "Nervenarzt," he criticizes the alleged "treasure trove" of digital storage media laden with radiological images that often accompany every report today.

These CDs or DVDs can only be truly valuable, Golder says, if they can be opened easily, what you're looking for quickly, and the findings can be examined without delay. However, this is precisely where problems persist—especially when comparing radiographs with the results of clinical examinations and during expert opinions. In the digital age, we are certainly far removed from the direct access to image information that was available with the simple X-ray bag of yesteryear.

In any case, Golder recalls that reaching for the "analog" images generally took less time than viewing and evaluating them. Today, the startup times are longer—sometimes much longer. You insert the CD/DVD into your laptop, wait for varying lengths of time until it is recognized and noisily incorporated by the respective DICOM viewer (software for viewing digital X-ray reports), until you are prompted to open it, until you reach the overview of the saved image files and are offered the option to open them in any order.

And if the display program has an interface and controls that are unfamiliar, even more time is wasted. According to Golder's very rough, but probably not entirely inaccurate, estimate, and taking into account his own experience, at least every second CD/DVD containing radiological data remains unopened and thus unnoticed in the files. "What a deficit on the path to professional information!

" Golder laments, "what a failure to independently assess the visual material! What an intellectual loss!"