Well, thanks to someone being off due to a back injury, I am working 3 or 4 days per week down in CT... this could not have come at a better time for me clinical wise!
I saw an interesting case this week that I wanted to share! We do A LOT of chest angios and they always seem to come in spurts... we never just do one, we do 15 in a day. I have been working in CT for just over a year now and for the first time I was able to diagnose a PE on my own. I was doing the oblique reformats that are part of our protocol and there they were!! The patient didn't have just one but multiple, bilateral PE's! Here are some of the reformatted images that I did:
I was really proud of myself for being able to identify the PE's on my own. I feel bad that the patient is obviously sick but I was almost giddy! That sounds awful doesn't it?
Of course this was the same day that I did another PE study on a 37 week pregnant patient, totally missed the bolus and ended up with a mediocre study at best. I got chewed out by the radiologist but there was absolutely nothing I could do. I waited an extra MAYBE 2 seconds to start my tracker image to spare the patient and her baby a little radiation, and apparently that was long enough for the contrast to all ready be making her aorta nice and bright. The study was read as "no gross PE" but a limited exam. I feel awful about it still and that was 4 days ago!
This is the end of a really really long stretch of work. Today is my first day off since the Sunday before last and boy do I need it! 3 whole days off sounds like a great treat to me right now!
