Academic Activity Report
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Methodol. Jul 20, 2021; 11(4): 110-115
Published online Jul 20, 2021. doi: 10.5662/wjm.v11.i4.110
Sacrum magnetic resonance imaging for low back and tail bone pain: A quality initiative to evaluate and improve imaging utility
Samantha Castillo, Robert Joodi, L Errett Williams, Parham Pezeshk, Avneesh Chhabra
Samantha Castillo, Robert Joodi, Parham Pezeshk, Avneesh Chhabra, Department of Radiology, UT Southwestern, Dallas, TX 75390, United States
L Errett Williams, Medical School, UT Southwestern, Dallas, TX 75390, United States
Author contributions: Chhabra A, Pezeshk P and Joodi R conceived of the project; Joodi R, Castillo S and Williams LE performed a retrospective chart review and data analysis under the guidance of Drs. Chhabra A and Pezeshk P. Chhabra A and Pezeshk P reviewed patient imaging; Castillo S and Pezeshk P prepared and performed clinician education; Castillo S, Pezeshk P and Chhabra A contributed to the final version of the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Dr. Chhabra A receives payment as a consultant for Treace 3D Medical Inc. and Icon Medical and book royalties from Jaypee and Wolters. The remaining authors have no financial conflicts of interest to disclose.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Samantha Castillo, MD, Academic Fellow, Department of Radiology, UT Southwestern, 5303 Harry Hines Blvd, Dallas, TX 75390, United States. ssirignano@gmail.com
Received: October 22, 2020
Peer-review started: October 22, 2020
First decision: November 25, 2020
Revised: December 20, 2020
Accepted: May 20, 2021
Article in press: May 20, 2021
Published online: July 20, 2021
Core Tip

Core Tip: Sacrum magnetic resonance studies ordered for low back pain were suspected to lack clinical utility at our institution. A literature review demonstrated a lack of evidence based practice in ordering of this study for low back/tail bone pain. A quality project was then pursued to first assess the clinical usefulness of the study. Over four years these studies had no major impacts on management. An educational component of the quality project was then pursued with a rapid decrease in the number of studies ordered by referring providers.