There are many things a diagnostic radiologist can do for people and patients to help them get better. Their job is to work in the radiology department to help read radiological images to see if there are any abnormalities that are going on. This will be a short guide on the job of a radiologist so the next time one has to go to the doctor, they know what is happening when they get an x-ray.
People will have a test ordered by their regular doctor or the emergency room doctor for different reasons. Someone can have abdominal pain, leg injury, a severe cough, or terrible headache. Depending on whatever other signs that there might be, someone may need to get things like a chest x-ray, a CT scan, or an MRI.
The patient will either have to go to the radiology department or there are special portable machines that allow the imaging if a person is very sick that they cannot move from their hospital bed. There are many other tests besides the three previously mentioned. There are ultrasounds that can be taken, and there are images which allow visualization of the digestive tract and vasculature in motion.
Radiologists are experts at looking at images. They are trained to look at many different images of different types. An example of studies done for a patients are like those done to study a patient with abdominal pain. An emergency room physician might need an x-ray of the abdomen and an ultrasound. If the person has gallbladder disease, the doctor will want the ultrasound. However, if the pain is less specific, the ER doctor might also need a cat scan. Though the ER doctor can read the images, the radiologist will confirm it.
An x-ray is an image which only takes a few seconds to take. Cat scans and MRIs will take a little longer, but more information can be read from these latter tests. Cat scans, however, give much more exposure to radiation to the patient so it should only be done when absolutely necessary.
Images can see many things like fractures and infections in the lung. They can see cancers of different body parts. This is why a radiologist is needed because pointing these things out is important.
Radiological exams can be very tricky to read as there are many things to take note of especially if something is abnormal. This is why having trained radiologists is important because they focus on learning to read these exams only. This, therefore, is a great help to other physicians who need to make sure the tests that they are ordering are read correctly.
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