when someone says "screening" that's looking for "stuff" yes or no?
I can grasp the concept, i'm telling you in reality, xrays as a screening tool, are about as non specific as you can get. They really add nothing in almost all cases and very little in a few specific cases overall.
In theory they may help prevent a delay, in reality, the same questions must be asked, the same history taken, the same clinical questions answered the same diagnostic routes and tests taken to get a proper diagnosis and course of care.
we'll use your example of a fractured sesamoid bone in the knee. Just because no changes are seen radiologically in 5 years doesn't meant there aren't. there has to be a change of at least 30%-50% in the bone density to see any change on that film. That leaves a lot of changes going on you'll never see. So you still must ask the same questions, do the same tests and use the same clinical decision making you would in the first place. Whether or not the patella was fractured 5 years ago or not you still have to do the same things. It offers very little other than to say, cool, it didn't or it did change in the past 5 years, now lets ask the important questions and start ruling things in or out.
If my experiences are so off, show me one study that shows the efficacy and measurable increases in outcomes based on screening xrays or as you like to say "baseline". I'd love to read it. I can't say i've come across any healthcare professionals across all sorts of specialties that think a prior x-ray is anything more than "interesting" to compare new ones too and those are usually ones taken for a reason to begin with and then used to compare something that is the same reason for taking them later on.
I can grasp the concept, i'm telling you in reality, xrays as a screening tool, are about as non specific as you can get. They really add nothing in almost all cases and very little in a few specific cases overall.
In theory they may help prevent a delay, in reality, the same questions must be asked, the same history taken, the same clinical questions answered the same diagnostic routes and tests taken to get a proper diagnosis and course of care.
we'll use your example of a fractured sesamoid bone in the knee. Just because no changes are seen radiologically in 5 years doesn't meant there aren't. there has to be a change of at least 30%-50% in the bone density to see any change on that film. That leaves a lot of changes going on you'll never see. So you still must ask the same questions, do the same tests and use the same clinical decision making you would in the first place. Whether or not the patella was fractured 5 years ago or not you still have to do the same things. It offers very little other than to say, cool, it didn't or it did change in the past 5 years, now lets ask the important questions and start ruling things in or out.
If my experiences are so off, show me one study that shows the efficacy and measurable increases in outcomes based on screening xrays or as you like to say "baseline". I'd love to read it. I can't say i've come across any healthcare professionals across all sorts of specialties that think a prior x-ray is anything more than "interesting" to compare new ones too and those are usually ones taken for a reason to begin with and then used to compare something that is the same reason for taking them later on.