Clinical assessment before PET/computed tomography: frequency and diagnostic impact.

Authors

Mohammed A M Alqahtani, Yuki Arita, Walter Noordzij, Thomas C Kwee

Published in

Nuclear medicine communications. Jun 10, 2026. Epub Jun 10, 2026.

Abstract

To investigate how often referring physicians perform history taking and physical examination before PET/computed tomography (PET/CT) referral, and whether their absence influences clinical reasoning quality or diagnostic yield.
Patients undergoing PET/CT at a tertiary academic hospital were asked whether their referring physician had conducted history taking and physical examination before referral. Associations between omission of clinical assessment and clinical reasoning quality or PET/CT positivity (defined as PET/CT findings relevant to the clinical indication) were analyzed using multivariable regression.
Among 288 patients (median age: 66 years; 54% male), history taking was omitted in 18.2% and physical examination in 47.7%. For history taking, only referrals from pulmonology were significantly more likely to include history taking [odds ratio (OR): 4.708, P = 0.033]. For physical examination, referrals from residents were more likely to include physical examination (OR: 2.355, P = 0.022), as were surgical departments (OR: 8.527, P = 0.030), requests for new clinical complaints (OR: 2.303, P = 0.008), and total-body PET/CT scans (OR: 1.870, P = 0.037), whereas urology referrals were less likely (OR: 0.019, P = 0.008). Neither omission of history taking nor physical examination was associated with clinical reasoning quality or PET/CT positivity (all P > 0.15).
A relevant proportion of patients referred for PET/CT did not receive history taking or physical examination. While omission of these assessments did not appear to affect the clinical reasoning quality of the referring physicians or PET/CT yield, it may limit the contextual information available for interpreting imaging results.

PMID:
42295054
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 15 Jun 2026.

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