Dear Friends,

This year I intend to discuss the basic principles of interpreting chest radiographs, under the heading, “The Beauty of Basic Knowledge”.

I plan to structure the discussion into three main parts, which will take us through the whole academic year:

Part 1. A painless approach to interpretation
Part 2. To err is human: how to avoid slipping up
Part 3. The wisdom of Dr. Pepe

This week’s case is the first chapter of my ‘painless approach to interpretation’. Interpreting chest radiographs is not difficult if we follow Confucius’ saying: “ A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. As a clinical radiologist, my first step is to ask myself three questions:

a) Is there any visible abnormality?
b) It is intra or extrapulmonary?
c) What does it look like?

Today I’ll discuss the first question. Below you can see the chest radiographs of three different patients. Do you see any visible abnormality in any of them? Let me know in the comments section and come back on Friday for my answer.

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