What is the added value of specialist radiology review of multidisciplinary team meeting cases in a tertiary care center?

Purpose: Multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTMs) are an important component of the workload of radiologists. This study investigated how often subspecialized radiologists change patient management in MDTMs at a tertiary care institution.

Materials and methods: Over 2 years, six subspecialty radiologists documented their contributions to MDTMs at a tertiary care center. Both in-house and external imaging examinations were discussed at the MDTMs. All imaging examinations (whether primary or second opinion) were interpreted and reported by subspecialty radiologist prior to the MDTMs. The management change ratio (MC_ratio) of the radiologist was defined as the number of cases in which the radiologist's input in the MDTM changed patient management beyond the information that was already provided by the in-house (primary or second opinion) radiology report, as a proportion of the total number of cases whose imaging examinations were prepared for demonstration in the MDTM.

Results: Sixty-eight MDTMs were included. The time required for preparing and attending all MDTMs (excluding imaging examinations that had not been reported yet) was 11,000 min, with a median of 172 min (IQR 113-200 min) per MDTM, and a median of 9 min (IQR 8-13 min) per patient. The radiologists' input changed patient management in 113 out of 1138 cases, corresponding to an MC_ratio of 8.4%. The median MC_ratio per MDTM was 6% (IQR 0-17%).

Conclusion: Radiologists' time investment in MDTMs is considerable relative to the small proportion of cases in which they influence patient management in the MDTM. The use of radiologists for MDTMs should therefore be improved.

Clinical relevance statement: The use of radiologists for MDTMs (multidisciplinary team meetings) should be improved, because their time investment in MDTMs is considerable relative to the small proportion of cases in which they influence patient management in the MDTM.

Key points: • Multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTMs) are an important component of the workload of radiologists. • In a tertiary care center in which all imaging examinations have already been interpreted and reported by subspecialized radiologists before the MDTM takes place, the median time investment of a radiologist for preparing and demonstrating one MDTM patient is 9 min. • In this setting, the radiologist changes patient management in only a minority of cases in the MDTM.