A Review of the Role of Thoracic Imaging in Clinical Practice in a Tertiary Care Centre in Eastern India.

Background: The wide availability of Computed tomography (CT) imaging facility in recent years, even in district or sub-district level, has demanded proper evaluation of the trend of its utilisation and assessment of benefit in diagnosis of different diseases. Material & methods: It is a retrospective analytic study of CT thorax images along with its medical records in a tertiary care hospital in sub-urban locality of a metropolitan city over a period of one year. Minitab software (version 15.1.0.0) used for statistical analysis. Result: 226 CT thorax images reviewed; 71% referred from pulmonary Medicine department and mostly from Pulmonary Medicine out-patient department (60.6%). Overall, the final diagnosis obtained with CT imaging remained unaltered in 62.8% of cases. However, among those with discordant radiological diagnosis, normal CT images were the most common finding (29.8%); infective aetiology was the most common pretest provisional diagnosis among these patients. Conclusion: CT imaging is immensely helpful for critical decision making regarding management. However, it should be utilised more judiciously specially when dealing with suspected pulmonary infections, especially in resource constrained set-up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]