CT of acute appendicitis: can diagnostic accuracy serve as a practical performance metric for readers specialized in abdominal imaging?
OBJECTIVE
To investigate diagnostic accuracy for acute appendicitis at computed tomography (CT) as a performance metric for radiologists specialized in abdominal imaging.


METHODS
We retrospectively identified six attending abdominal imagers who each independently interpreted over 100 CT studies for suspected acute appendicitis.


RESULTS
The mean number of studies per reader was 311 (range, 129-386). Mean reader diagnostic accuracy was 95.0% (range, 91.4-97.1%). Only one had a diagnostic accuracy (91.4%) that was significantly lower than all others.


CONCLUSIONS
Diagnostic accuracy for acute appendicitis at CT may be an impractical performance metric for radiologists specialized in abdominal imaging.
Department of Radiology University of California, San Francisco, 505 Parnassus Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94143-0628.
Lisa L
LL
Chu
Emily M
EM
Webb
Joseph W
JW
Stengel
Benjamin M
BM
Yeh
Ying
Y
Lu
Fergus V
FV
Coakley
D000208:Acute Disease; D001064:Appendicitis / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D061827:Dimensional Measurement Accuracy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods
Acute appendicitis; Diagnostic accuracy; Performance metric; Quality assurance