Inter-observer Agreement between Urologists and Radiologists in Interpreting the Computed Tomography Images of Emergency Patients with Renal Colic
Abstract
Materials and Methods: Thirty sample images of both LDCT and SDCT from renal colic patients were extracted from January 2013 to December 2015 in a tertiary teaching hospital. Five emergency medicine residents interpreted
60 image samples over a time span of 3 weeks. The presence of a ureteric stone, the stone’s size and location, and signs of obstruction were recorded in the reports. A total of 300 reports were compared with formal readings
by a radiologist. The inter-observer agreement and kappa value were calculated for comparative analysis.
Results: Identification of ureteric stones showed almost perfect inter-observer agreement on SDCT (kappa value: 0.93), and the percentage of agreement was 96.7%. However, on LDCT, the inter-observer agreement was substantial (kappa value: 0.73), and the percentage of agreement was 88.0%.
Conclusion: Using SDCT, emergency medicine residents had almost perfect inter-observer agreement in interpreting the CT images of patients with renal colic compared to a radiologist. However, when using LDCT, they had a lower inter-observer agreement.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22037/uj.v0i0.3906
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