Emergency and Postoperative Gastrointestinal Fluoroscopy: A Lost Art

Emergency and postoperative gastrointestinal (GI) fluoroscopy is an important procedure for problem-solving and patient management. The problem facing diagnostic radiology today is that there are only a few United States Diagnostic Radiology Training Programs that have any active faculty interested in GI fluoroscopy, and the volume of GI fluoroscopy is continuing to decline. Both endoscopy and cross-sectional imaging have continued appropriately to replace many standard GI fluoroscopy procedures. Thus, our current radiology residents are not trained in GI fluoroscopy procedures as they were 20 years ago. Another problem is that our referring physicians have minimal understanding of how GI fluoroscopy procedures can help them manage their patients. So not only is radiology suffering a negative impact of little training in GI fluoroscopy, but also our referring physicians are not ordering these studies, as they have no knowledge of how they can solve their patient's problem. Many of our current referring physicians think CT or MRI can solve every GI problem.
Source: Contemporary Diagnostic Radiology - Category: Radiology Tags: Article Source Type: research