Okay, based on the radiology report, what will happen next? Will I have surgery? Will I be off work?

You and your doctor will make the decision about your treatment. The radiologist will tell your doctor what can be “seen” on the images, but only you and your doctor can decide what the next steps are based on your personal health and body. Each case is unique. That’s why we fax the report to your doctor, so your doctor can make treatment recommendations. Sometimes your doctor may want to see the images. Other times your doctor may just read the report. It is different for every patient and every doctor. Your doctor may call our radiologists to talk to them about your results. Your doctor may even order more tests. Diagnostic imaging is just one component of your care. It is not the “final answer.” Often times patients say “I am in a lot of pain, but the report didn’t show anything abnormal.” Sometimes a patient’s images do not show anything out of the ordinary, even though the patient is in a lot of pain. Other times the patient’s images show many unordinary things, but the patient feels no pain at all. There is not necessarily a correlation between what is on the images and how the patient feels. Again, this is where your doctor comes in.

Can the radiologist tell me if the car accident I was in last week is causing my pain?

Radiologists do not usually talk about cause and effect in their reports. They usually talk about what they see on the images. Your doctor is the best person to use your imaging results in your care plan, just like your doctor uses your laboratory results in your care plan. Medicine is a very complicated science with many components. Our job is to give your doctor the best possible information we can about the images we have acquired.