Investigating the interpretation of emergency medicine physician (EMP)'s accuracy and reliability in the evaluation of cranial magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for patients presenting to the emergency department

Accurate evaluation of cranial Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) by Emergency Medicine Physicians (EMP) is critical in the treatment and management of patients in the emergency room. In this study, we aimed at evaluating the accuracy and reliability of EMPs while interpreting MRI images of patients presenting to the emergency department. Cranial MRI images of 100 patients presenting to Uludag University Medical Faculty's Emergency Service between 20 August 2020 and 20 February 2021 who underwent cranial MRI considering a neurological pathology wewe examined prospectively. EMPs included in the study were asked to evaluate these MRI images. Radiology specialist' report was conidered as the gold standard and compatibility between EMP's and radiologst's report was evaluated. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS Statistics 22.0 program and p < 0.05 was acepted as the level of significance. The general compatibility of EMP's and radiologist's cranial MRI reports in this study was found to be 93.4%. The overall consistency between the ragiologist's and radiology resident's interpretation report was 98.3%. In determining pathological findings, statistical significance was present in both EMP's and radiology resident's findings. Consequently, EMPs showed an outstanding perfomance in the evaluation of cranial MRI images. The fact that EMPs are the first physicians who recieve patients presenting with neurological symptoms, evaluate the differential diagnoses and offer primary treatment explains their high performance in the evaluation of these radiological findings.