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According to a prospective paired comparison study conducted at Mayday University Hospital, UK and Frimley Park Hospital, Camberley, Surrey, UK ,  diagnosis of scaphoid fractures by emergency physicians using Picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) had the same diagnostic accuracy as using Laser-printed films. The results of the study were published in the ‘Journal of Digital Imaging’.

PACS for imaging studies are rapidly being adopted in hospitals throughout the UK. There is a lot of research and financial investments towards development and installation of PACS workstations. Even though there has been several studies comparing conventional films with digitised soft copies, very little comparison has been made between PACS and laser hard copies for assessing the diagnostic accuracy of detecting fractures by emergency physicians.

In this study, a total of 34 imaging studies were reported by 38 physicians using both PACS workstations and laser-printed films. The percentage of emergency physicians correctly reporting imaging studies was similar when comparing PACS images to laser film copies (80.7% versus 81.0%). The sensitivity and specificity of PACS for diagnosing scaphoid fractures was 79.5% and 81.6%, versus 78.1% and 83.8% for conventional films. There is no significant difference in accuracy of diagnosis between PACS and laser film copies when scaphoid X-rays are reported by emergency physicians.

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