CT scan interpretation

[_Jelen90]

My husband just had his first CT since he was diagnosed last year. He has a follow up with his radiation oncologist this afternoon.

That being said, we were told by the tech that the oncologist will be able to access the CT pictures but the report from the radiologist will most likely not be ready yet. So my question is, can the oncologist interpret the ct at all?. I am dying to know and feel like the next few days will be awful if we have to wait.

[Jacques]

... So my question is, can the oncologist interpret the ct at all?...

My oncologist would put my scan's CD-ROM in his computer and launch his CT scan viewer software and flip through the various scan slices to show me where there might be problems. He was pretty skilled at doing this.

The software for viewing CT scans is freeware, so I installed it on my computer, too. But I never managed to be as good as my oncologist in seeing what was going on.

[_Jelen90]

... So my question is, can the oncologist interpret the ct at all?...

My oncologist would put my scan's CD-ROM in his computer and launch his CT scan viewer software and flip through the various scan slices to show me where there might be problems. He was pretty skilled at doing this.

The software for viewing CT scans is freeware, so I installed it on my computer, too. But I never managed to be as good as my oncologist in seeing what was going on.

Yeah, here in Alberta (Canada) it's all electronic and any doctor/specialist can access Lab results, diagnostic imaging etc because it's a provincial software. So I know he will have the images in front of him on his computer during the consult. I was just wondering if he was "qualified" to interpret the results at all. It's good that your oncologist was able to read them...hopefully we will get some answers!

[zx10guy]

It varies. The first oncologist I had would look through all the scans (CT and PET). Because he did this in front of me and explained the different things he was looking at, I got some knowledge where I would look at my own scans now. I definitely don't have the experience and training as doctors and specifically radiologists. But the things my previous doctor pointed out allowed me to key in on specific features/structures. Also, much of reading scans is doing comparisons with previous scans to see if there are any changes. This is why it's extremely valuable to have all your scans done in the same place to allow easy comparisons with previous scans. When I left my previous oncologist, the new oncologist used a different scan facility. I brought all my previous scans on CD over to the new facility for them to load into their system.

My current oncologist doesn't look at my scans and relies on the radiology report exclusively. So it depends on the doctor. Even with my previous oncologist who would look at the scan images, he would still look at the radiology report.