Radiology report gobblety gook

[tc]

I just got my report from my latest MRI. Why can't radiologists use plain English? Is there a good website that explains all these strange words to non-medical people?
Has anyone else noticed that tumor measurements vary from radiologist to radiologist? It seems to be a bit subjective.
Teresa

[cindylee]

Hi Teresa..Other than looking each word up on-line, or using a medical dictionary on line, there really is no easy way. I have two suggestions..try googling medical dictionary, I use a couple of those. And www.whiplash.com, that should get you started. Hope this helps a little. Cindy

[susan]

I would probably sit down with my PCP and ask for an interpretation (& don't be afraid to write down notes while he tells you what it means, You may forget if you wait to write it down later).
I'm nurse and am used to reading that stuff. I've seen some reports that are almost "overread" & very confusing and some are very to the point. I think some radiologists are better at summing up their findings than others. Sometimes are more than one way to see something and both can be correct, just different.
As for measurements, I had a small tumor with 2 large cysts. One radiologist measured & reported each component separately and another radiologist read all 3 together as one big "lesion". Big difference in centimeters!
Reading and measuring and interpreting are part of the "art" of medicine. The important thing is that it's your medical information and you have a right to have it explained in plain English.
Hope that helps,
Susan

[tc]

Susan and Cindy,
Here's the particular paragraph that I needed translated into English:
"There is homogeneous postcontrast enhancement precontrast lesion is essentially isointense to the cord on T1. Slightly heterogeneous on T2 weighted images but predominantly hyperintense, particularly on inversion recovery
images."
Maybe it is serious and bad news, but it's so unintelligible to me that I find it funny.
Teresa

[susan]

I am no radiologist, I can understand some if very basically.
It is referring to the way the tumor absorbed the contrast dye and comparing the tumor to the spinal cord itself. It helps to differentiate the type of tumor-ependymomas absorb contrast in one way and astrocytomas or hemangiomas, etc absorb it differently.
That's how they can tell you what it is likely to be before they take it out in surgery. The surgeon will tell you the exam of the tissue removed in surgery by the pathologist is the final word.
"homogenous enhancement" means the whole tumor absorbed the contrast in the same way (there aren't darker spots or lighter spots) , "isointense to the cord" means the tumor has the same intensity as the cord itself.
T1 and T2 weighted images are different methods of taking the picture, then they compare the picture of the same thing taken 2 different ways to each other. So what was "homogenous", (the same), on T1 was "slightly heterogenous", or different on the T2 weighted image.
Unless you know the characteristic of each type of possible tumor on an MRI, it isn't going to mean anything to you.
So, it probably isn't a good or bad thing, since you aleady know you have a tumor. They are just describing what it looks like. The doctor will compare it to the previous MRI to help him decide if it is time to do surgery or if it is better to continue to wait.
hope that helps,
Again I am no authority on the subject, a doctor could tell you better.

[tc]

Thanks so much, Susan. Your translation helps. I have an appointment next week, so I will ask my questions there.
I wish that an MRI computer program measured the tumor rather than a radiologist using a virtual ruler. The human measurements seem to vary from scan to scan (both upwards and downwards).
Teresa