Microwave ablation on par with surgery for thyroid cancer survival
Microwave ablation may be a suitable alternative to surgical resection when it comes to ultrasound-detected thyroid cancer, a study published April 2 in Radiology found.
Researchers led by Zhen-Long Zhao, MD, from China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing found no significant difference in progression-free survival rates between patients receiving ablation or surgery. Additionally, microwave ablation led to less blood loss, shorter incision length, and shorter procedure and hospitalization durations.
“Microwave ablation is a feasible option for selected patients with multifocal T1N0M0 papillary thyroid carcinoma,” Z...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - April 2, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: Amerigo Allegretto Tags: Ultrasound Source Type: news
Does teleradiology increase malpractice liability for radiologists?
Medical malpractice cases involving teleradiology tend to be more severe and result in higher indemnity payments than other radiology malpractice claims, according to research published April 2 in Radiology.
In a retrospective review of medical malpractice claims over a 12-year period, researchers from Harvard Medical School led by Adam Schaffer, MD, found that teleradiology claims were more likely to involve patient death, as well as indemnity payments (and higher amounts). The teleradiology cases also more frequently involved interprovider communication problems.
“These attributes of teleradiology claims underscore ...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - April 2, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: Erik L. Ridley Tags: Enterprise Imaging Malpractice Source Type: news
SCCT highlights annual meeting program
The Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) is highlighting the program for its upcoming annual meeting, to be held from July 18 to 21 in Washington, DC.
The society plans to offer attendees "practical tools to support the exponential rise in the global utilization of cardiovascular CT," it said. The meeting will feature a new program called India Presents, consisting of abstracts from authors from the Indian subcontinent, and joint sessions with the Society of Cardiovascular Angiography Interventions (SCAI) and the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE).
Tracks for personalized learning will include Gam...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - April 1, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: AuntMinnie.com staff writers Tags: Industry News Subspecialties Cardiovascular Radiology Source Type: news
Can Chat GPT accurately refer patients to IR for treatment?
Chloe Cross, MD, of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.In interventional radiology (IR), most of us quickly become accustomed to needing to explain what we do -- to other clinicians, patients, their families, and even our own families. But how do patients get their own information about IR, if at all? When a patient receives a diagnosis, they may have multiple medical specialists offering various treatment recommendations, so they may be unsure which to follow.If patients search for information using new tools like artificial intelligence, what is it telling them? How much does AI know about IR? Does ...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - April 1, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: Chloe G. Cross, MD Tags: Interventional Interventional Radiology Source Type: news
AI shows promise in detecting interval breast cancers
AI can detect interval breast cancers that may often be overlooked, according to research published on March 28 in Clinical Radiology.
For their study, Prof. Levent Çelik, MD, from Maltepe University Hospital and Erkin Aribal, MD, from Acibadem University, both in Istanbul, Turkey, found that when AI was implemented into breast cancer screening in a middle-income country, it achieved high sensitivity and specificity in detecting interval cancers that were initially labeled as BI-RADS 1 or 2.
“AI has the potential to enhance screening mammogram outcomes, particularly in countries with limited resources, by reducing hu...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - April 1, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: Amerigo Allegretto Tags: Subspecialties Breast Imaging Source Type: news
Can AI help chest DDR achieve clinical adoption?
Chest dynamic digital radiography (DDR) may have received a boost toward clinical use in patients with lung disorders, with researchers developing AI to perform time-consuming analysis involved in the technology, according to researchers in New York City.
A group at Mount Sinai Hospital developed a “pipeline” of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to analyze lung areas in DDR image sequences from patients. The model performed well enough to act as a surrogate to standard pulmonary function tests, they found.
“Our findings add to growing evidence suggesting DDR as a potential [pulmonary function test] surrogate,”...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - April 1, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: Will Morton Tags: Digital X-Ray Artificial Intelligence Source Type: news
Study finds decreases in imaging's share of all healthcare spending
Although medical imaging has frequently been considered a major culprit behind the growth of healthcare spending in the U.S., its share among employer-insured individuals actually decreased between 2010 and 2021, researchers have reported.
In fact, imaging's part fell from 10.5% to 8.9% during the decade, according to a team led by first author Michal Horný of Emory University School of Medicine and senior author Richard Duszak, MD, of the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. What's more, "nominal spending" (i.e., the sum of payments from health plans and patients to health care providers for imaging and ...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - March 29, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: Kate Madden Yee Tags: Economics Source Type: news
How are radiology practices impacted by annual changes to the MPFS?
Conclusion
Understanding the annual changes in Medicare’s fee schedules is useful when analyzing areas where the practice’s revenue might be increasing or decreasing. Many commercial payers base their fees on the Medicare table, although not all of them make the same changes, or at the same time, as Medicare does. The same volume-weighted analysis technique can be applied to commercial fee schedules, as well.
Healthcare Administrative Partners will continue to keep you abreast of the Medicare payment system.
Sandy Coffta is vice president of client services at Healthcare Administrative Partners.
The comments and...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - March 29, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: Sandy Coffta Tags: Economics Source Type: news
New imaging method shows oxygen movement in the brain
A new bioluminescence imaging technique appears to show movement of oxygen in the brain, according to research at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
The imaging technique studied in mice involves using a virus to deliver instructions to neurological cells called astrocytes and injecting a substrate called furimazine into the brain to generate light. While existing oxygen monitoring techniques provide information about a very small area of the brain, the researchers were able to observe, in real-time, a large section of the cortex of the mice.
The research is important because it opens doors for studying diseases...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - March 29, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: AuntMinnie.com staff writers Tags: Advanced Visualization Industry News Source Type: news
PET/MRI may improve diagnosis of Cushing disease
PET/MRI could become the diagnostic method of choice over MRI alone for identifying small pituitary tumors associated with Cushing disease, according to a study published March 21 in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
In patients diagnosed with the disease yet who had inconclusive MRI results, PET/MRI was positive in 100% of cases, noted lead author Ilanah Pruis, a doctoral student at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
“This multimodal imaging technique provides a welcome improvement for diagnosis, planning of surgery, and clinical outcome in patients with Cushing disease,” the authors wrote.
...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - March 29, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: Will Morton Tags: Molecular Imaging Source Type: news
The Radiology Group CEO to pay $3.1M in false-claims case
The Radiology Group and its CEO Anand Lalaji will pay the U.S. and various states a combined $3.1 million to settle a federal civil fraud lawsuit over allegations that the company and Lalaji violated the False Claims Act.
In a statement, the U.S. Attorney's Office Southern District of New York said the settlement resolves claims that The Radiology Group and Lalaji fraudulently billed federal healthcare programs through a process of signing off on interpretation reports prepared by contractors in India. The contractors were not permitted to practice medicine in the U.S. or bill federal healthcare programs.
The Atlanta-bas...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - March 29, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: AuntMinnie.com staff writers Tags: Industry News Administration Source Type: news
NYU Langone begins histotripsy for liver cancer
NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center is using histotripsy for some liver cancer cases, it said in a March 28 blog post.
Histotripsy uses focused ultrasound to deliver external beams intended to destroy cancerous tissue while leaving surrounding tissue intact. Histotripsy could become an option for patients who might otherwise be unlikely candidates for radiation or other ablation techniques, according to NYU Langone Health.
"This device allows us to offer ablation to patients who would normally not be good candidates," said Mikhail Silk, MD, an interventional radiologist at NYU Langone who performed the proced...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - March 29, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: AuntMinnie.com staff writers Tags: Industry News Source Type: news
Synthesis Health adds to installed base
Image management software developer Synthesis Health has implemented remote clinical diagnostic reading capability for RMG Imaging Consultants, a radiology group that serves Montebello Hospital in Montebello, CA. The software components overlay onto the existing PACS at Montebello Hospital, a 224-bed Adventist Health facility. The installation marks the six major implementation of Synthesis OS since it became commercially available in late 2023, according to the vendor. (Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines)
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - March 29, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: AuntMinnie.com staff writers Tags: Installations Source Type: news
Industry payments to radiologists total out at $392M
Out of 39 specialties, radiology was in the top third when ranked by industry payments to doctors over a nine-year period, according to an article published March 28 in JAMA.Between August 2013 and December 2022, 50% of 68,718 radiologists received industry payments totaling $392 million, lead author Ahmed Sayed, of Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt, and U.S. colleagues reported. The total for all U.S. physicians over the period was $12.1 billion.“Despite evidence that financial conflicts of interest may influence physician prescribing and may damage patients’ trust in medical professionals, such relationships remai...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - March 28, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: Will Morton Tags: Practice Management Source Type: news
Cleerly touts Ischemia tech clinical results
Cleerly is touting study results regarding its Ischemia technology, published March 13 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging.The study describes the validation of Cleerly's AI-guided quantitative coronary CT angiography (AI-QCT) Ischemia technology for diagnostic accuracy and prognostic risk stratification. In two trials, the Credence and Pacific-1 studies comprised a total of 513 patients who underwent coronary CT angiography (CCTA), myocardial perfusion imaging with SPECT, and fractional flow reserve derived from CT (FFRCT).The company highlighted that for patients with an abnormal...
Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - March 28, 2024 Category: Radiology Authors: AuntMinnie.com staff writers Tags: Industry News Source Type: news
