Chest radiograph interpretation by medical students.

AIM: To assess the ability of final year medical students to interpret conventional chest radiographs. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Ten conventional chest radiographs were selected from a teaching hospital radiology department library that were good radiological examples of common conditions. All were conditions that a medical student should be expected to recognize by the end of their training. One normal radiograph was included. The radiographs were shown to 52 final year medical students who were asked to describe their findings. RESULTS: The median score achieved was 12.5 out of 20 (range 6-18). There was no difference between the median scores of male and female students (12.5 and 12.3, respectively, p=0.82) but male students were more likely to be certain of their answers than female students (median certainty scores 23.0 and 14.0, respectively). The overall degree of certainty was low. On no radiograph were more than 25% of students definite about their answer. Students had received little formal radiology teaching (2-42 h, median 21) and few expressed an interest in radiology as a career. Only two (3.8%) students thought they were good at interpreting chest radiographs, 17 (32.7%) thought they were bad or awful. CONCLUSION: Medical students reaching the end of their training do not perform well at interpreting simple chest radiographs. They lack confidence and have received little formal radiological tuition. Perhaps as a result, few are interested in radiology as a career, which is a matter for concern in view of the current shortage of radiologists in the UK.

Paget's disease in an archeological population.

The aim of this investigation was to study the prevalence and distribution of Paget's disease in an archeological population. Paget's disease, first described over 100 years ago, is a well-recognized chronic disorder involving abnormal bone turnover with established radiological features. Prevalence within modern populations varies both within individual countries and between them. Paleopathological examples are uncommon and sporadically reported both from Europe and the Americas and from many periods of history. A large skeletal assemblage (2,770 individuals) from Barton on Humber, UK, provided an opportunity to examine the prevalence of Paget's disease in one area of the northern England over the period 900-1,850 AD. All bones were examined visually for evidence of Paget's disease of the bone (PDB) and all abnormal bones were examined further by plain radiography. Fifteen cases of probable Paget's disease were found. The overall prevalence was 2.1% in those aged >40 years. The prevalence before 1500 AD was 1.7% and post-1500 AD was 3.1%. The distribution of disease mirrored modern disease, with the lumbar spine, pelvis, and proximal femur being the commonest sites. The prevalence of Paget's disease in the United Kingdom over the last 1,000 years has been assessed. Although there is a trend of increasing prevalence, this did not reach statistical significance. This is likely caused by the small sample size, but this is by far the greatest number of cases of PDB described in a single skeletal assemblage to date. The distribution of lesions within the skeleton is unchanged.