What Patients Think About Their Interventional Radiologists: Assessment Using a Leading Physician Ratings Website.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to evaluate patient satisfaction scores for interventional radiologists (IRs) across the United States using a leading physician ratings website. METHODS: The physician ratings website Healthgrades was manually queried for all 2,774 Medicare-participating self-designated IRs. All patient-reviewed IRs for whom the primary "likelihood of recommending to family and friends" field was scored were included, resulting in 781 included IRs. Physician characteristics were extracted from Medicare data sets. All available patient satisfaction scores (1 [poor] to 5 [excellent]: likelihood to recommend, ease of scheduling, office environment, staff friendliness, trust in physician's decisions, how well physician explains condition, how well physician listens and answers questions, whether physician spends appropriate time with patients) and wait times were extracted from Healthgrades. Associations among measures were explored. RESULTS: IRs' mean likelihood-to-recommend score was 4.3 ± 1.2 (median, 5.0; 64.5% received a score of 5; 10.5% received scores < 3). Mean scores ranged from 4.4 to 4.5 for office-related factors and from 4.3 to 4.5 for physician-related factors. Likelihood-to-recommend scores showed substantial correlations with office-related factors (r = 0.738 to 0.780) and physician-related factors (r = 0.918 to 0.946). Likelihood to recommend was significantly higher for IRs with shorter wait times (P < .001) but was not associated with physician gender or geographic region (P = 0.370-0.791), nor was there any correlation with physician age, years since graduation, or group practice size (r = -0.089 to 0.096). CONCLUSIONS: Satisfaction scores on a leading physician ratings website generally range from very good to excellent for US IRs. Most patients leaving reviews are likely to recommend their own IRs to friends or family members. The likelihood to recommend is strongly associated with differences in wait times.

A Case of Pyomyoma following Uterine Fibroid Embolization and a Review of the Literature.

Background. Since its introduction in 1996, uterine fibroid embolization (UFE) has become standard medical practice in the management of symptomatic uterine fibroids. An extremely rare complication, pyomyoma, has been reported only 5 times previously in the literature following UFE. Case. A 37-year-old woman underwent UFE for symptomatic leiomyomas of the uterus. Signs and symptoms of uterine infection ensued, beginning at 6 days following the procedure. Recurrent fevers and increasing leukocytosis despite the intravenous administration of appropriate antibiotics eventually necessitated surgical intervention on postprocedure day #18. Conclusion. An extremely rare complication of UFE is herein presented, pyomyoma, with a review of other reported cases. Commonalities are sought among these few reported cases with the hope of increasing diagnostic acumen in the detection of this disease.

Simultaneous Multislice Accelerated Free-Breathing Diffusion-Weighted Imaging of the Liver at 3T.

PURPOSE: To perform image quality comparison between accelerated multiband diffusion acquisition (mb2-DWI) and conventional diffusion acquisition (c-DWI) in patients undergoing clinically indicated liver MRI. METHODS: In this prospective study 22 consecutive patients undergoing clinically indicated liver MRI on a 3-T scanner equipped to perform multiband diffusion-weighed imaging (mb-DWI) were included. DWI was performed with single-shot spin-echo echo-planar technique with fat-suppression in free breathing with matching parameters when possible using c-DWI, mb-DWI, and multiband DWI with a twofold acceleration (mb2-DWI). These diffusion sequences were compared with respect to various parameters of image quality, lesion detectability, and liver ADC measurements. RESULTS: Accelerated mb2-DWI was 40.9% faster than c-DWI (88 vs. 149 s). Various image quality parameter scores were similar or higher on mb2-DWI when compared to c-DWI. The overall image quality score (averaged over the three readers) was significantly higher for mb-2 compared to c-DWI for b = 0 s/mm(2) (3.48 ± 0.52 vs. 3.21 ± 0.54; p = 0.001) and for b = 800 s/mm(2) (3.24 ± 0.76 vs. 3.06 ± 0.86; p = 0.010). Total of 25 hepatic lesions were visible on mb2-DWI and c-DWI, with identical lesion detectability. There was no significant difference in liver ADC between mb2-DWI and c-DWI (p = 0.12). Bland-Altman plot demonstrates lower mean liver ADC with mb2-DWI compared to c-DWI (by 0.043 × 10(-3) mm(2)/s or 3.7% of the average ADC). CONCLUSION: Multiband technique can be used to increase acquisition speed nearly twofold for free-breathing DWI of the liver with similar or improved overall image quality and similar lesion detectability compared to conventional DWI.

Free-breathing single navigator gated cine cardiac magnetic resonance at 3 T: feasibility study in patients.

BACKGROUND: Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMRI) is an important tool to assess cardiac function. However, one of the limitations of CMRI is the need for frequent breath-holding (BH) steps. This may be inconvenient to some patients and limit the use of this modality in patients unable to cooperate because of cognitive reasons or physically incapable of performing the required BH steps. The purpose of this study is to overcome the intrinsic timing and computation limitations of dual-navigator cine imaging and demonstrate the feasibility of free-breathing (FB) cine cardiac left ventricular function with a single-respiratory-navigator gating at 3 T. RESULTS: Eight participants underwent cine CMRI with both the conventional 2-dimensional cine BH and FB navigator-gated techniques. Scan parameters were identical, except in the FB technique, in which a respiratory navigator and only 2 signal averages were used. Images were scored for quality. Left ventricular end-systolic volume and end-diastolic volume were calculated. The differences in the end-systolic volume and end-diastolic volume assessed by the BH and FB were not statistically significant with P = 0.9 and 0.2, respectively. There was a good agreement between LV volumes with the limits of agreement (± 2 SD = ± 22.36 mL). Image quality score was not significantly different (P = 0.76). CONCLUSIONS: Free-breathing cine imaging utilizing a single-respiratory-navigator gating technique is comparable to conventional BH technique in both qualitative and quantitative imaging measures. Therefore, the FB cine technique can be used as an alternative for children and patients who are unable to hold their breath.