Competency of residents and interns in pneumothorax diagnosis on chest radiography: an observer performance study

Aim: This study sought to investigate the competency of residents and interns in diagnosing pneumothorax on chest radiography, as well as to identify potential areas requiring training on this topic.
Materials and Methods: A case set including a total of 40 chest radiographies that were all in digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) format was loaded to a DICOM compatible software tool-ViewDEX (Viewer for Digital Evaluation of X-ray images). Fifty-three observers including 25 residents and 28 interns interpreted the images by answering all of the questions determined for each case.
Results: Overall accuracy rate to diagnose pneumothorax on chest radiography was 79% in the study cohort, while being 79.5% and 78.6% for resident and intern groups, respectively. No significant difference was found between residents and interns when compared in terms of accuracy rates (regardless of the residents’ specialties) (P = 0.600). When the residents’ specialties were considered, the diagnostic accuracy rate was found to be significantly different between groups (P < 0.05).
Conclusion: The results of our study in terms of the overall accuracy rates of residents and interns in pneumothorax diagnosis on chest radiography are comparable to the previous studies in the literature. However, comparison to another national study was not feasible due to the lack of published studies on this topic in Turkey. We believe our study may serve as a starting point by raising the awareness on the topic and promote further studies in our country.