Today's two staging papers share one lesson worth carrying into every report: know whether the test you are reading rules disease in or out, and say which. FDG PET/CT for rectal lateral nodes and PCCT for breast microcalcifications both fail as exclusion tests while succeeding at other tasks. When a referrer treats a negative scan as a green light, the report should make the residual uncertainty explicit — name what the modality does not reliably detect, so a normal study is not over-read as a clear field.
- State explicitly when a modality cannot exclude the disease being asked about
- PET/CT confirms rectal nodal disease well but does not exclude it
- PCCT should not be relied on for microcalcifications
- Write the limitation into the report, not just the finding
Read the rest in the app
You have read your two free briefings this month. The app carries all 27 specialties, every morning, free — and this finding is waiting in it.
Scan to keep reading on your phone. No account needed to start.
Tomorrow morning, before your first patient
One edition a day for radiology, written by the desk, every claim tied to its paper. Six minutes.
Get the app — free