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Diagnostic radiology is a key diagnostic tool in many different conditions and ccrucial for monitoring, treating, and predicting outcomes. Accurately interpreting basic radiological images is a paramount skill for medical professionals. Therefore, this study aimed to assess clinical-phase medical students and interns' knowledge on evident findings on CT scans. This observational cross-sectional study was conducted in a single region in Saudi Arabia from May 2022 to December 2022. An electronic questionnaire were used to collect data. Twenty-one radiograph-based questions were used, for which students were asked to provide the best diagnosis and report their confidence for each question. Ethical approval was obtained. A convenience sampling technique was used to recruit the participants and SPSS were used for data analysis. Two hundred fifty-two medical students were included, with a mean age of 23.02 (SD=1.52) year. Of those, females comprised 65.1% and 86.1% of the total participants were in the clinical year. Most students with above-average knowledge were internship students (37.1%) compared to 9.7% among clinical year students (p=0.001). In addition, students with average knowledge had a higher level of confidence (7.62/10) compared with students with average knowledge (5.24) and students with below-average knowledge (5.24 and 5.057, respectively; p=0.001). In conclusion, the high percentage of incorrect responses reported by the current study reflects a strong deficit in the baseline CT knowledge among medical students. Further interventions are necessary to ensure better radiographic education for future physicians.

Infections contracted during healthcare delivery in a hospital or ambulatory setting are collectively referred to as healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Healthcare workers and patients alike are vulnerable to serious problems as a result of the risk of HAIs. In the healthcare system, HAIs are considered among the most common and serious health problems. However, the occurrence of HAIs differs between different types of clinical departments within the hospital. Recently, the risk of HAIs has been increasing in radiology departments globally due to the central role of radiology in guiding clinical decisions for the diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of different diseases from almost all medical specialties. The radiology department is particularly vulnerable to HAIs because it serves as a transit hub for infected patients, non-infected patients, and healthcare workers. Furthermore, as the number of patients referred to radiology and the length of patient contact time has increased, thanks to modern imaging techniques such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, the risk of HAIs has also increased significantly. With the increasing use of interventional radiological procedures, patients and healthcare workers face a potentially greater risk of contracting HAIs due to the invasive nature of such procedures. Although not exhaustive, we attempted through a literature search to provide a general overview of infection prevention and control practices, address HAIs in the radiology departments, and highlight the challenges and measures taken to control infection transmission in the radiology departments.

Background: Abdominal pain is a common symptom in people of different ages due to various benign and life-threatening causes. Imaging studies, including computerized tomography (CT) scans, explore the clinical reasons behind this pain to prevent delayed diagnosis. Owing to abnormal findings, timely identification of the exact cause of abdominal pain is important in most diseases so treatment can be started earlier, but it has not yet been studied, making this research novel. This study was conducted to identify the prevalence of abnormal CT scan findings among referred patients with abdominal pain and to confirm or determine other diagnoses compared to other imaging modalities in the Emergency Department (ED). Methods: This observational retrospective study was conducted at the King Fahad Hospital, a tertiary hospital in Qassim. We included 2,144 patients who visited the ED and underwent abdominal CT scans between January 2021 and January 2022. Data on age, sex, CT findings, and results from other imaging modalities were collected from the Radiology Department. Results: We found that 2,144 patients referred from the ED to the Radiology Department complained of acute abdominal pain in 2021 for CT diagnosis. Approximately 28.2% of these patients had normal CT diagnoses. The average age at normal CT diagnosis was 38.6 years old. While 52% of CT diagnoses were abnormal, including obstructive ureteric stone (435, 20.3%), appendicitis (205, 9.6%), bowel obstruction (51, 2.4%), renal cancer (27, 1.3%), ovarian cancer (25, 1.2%), and obstructive bladder stone (25, 1.2%), with an average age of 40.4 years old, and 19% with accidental findings. Conclusions: Most of the cases with abdominal pain showed abnormal results in the CT scan. These results demonstrate the sole inefficiency of CT scan for the diagnosis of abdominal pain. So, clinical evaluations should be used together with abdominal ultrasonography to perform a timely and exact diagnosis.