Reading Your Radiology Report

You can get your report emailed, faxed, via the doctor’s web site or sent by regular “snail” mail.

This website (LOKAKAPP.com), under FAQ’s describes when to get an imaging study for low back pain and how to evaluate the result. A full description of a report is at http://www.RadiologyInfo.org. The report should say what you and your doctor requested it for, as specifically as possible. For example “Back and left leg pain. Suspect herniated disc at L4/5.” Be sure the radiologist that reads the images knows what to look for.

You can then refer to the PV curves in this blog, using your pre-imaging probability (p-value) obtained from the app LOBAK, to find the likelihood that your imaging, whether normal or showing a herniated disc, is a true or false diagnosis. If your scan shows an HNP, use the PVpos curve; if it did not show an HNP, use the PVneg curve.