Objectives
To evaluate musculoskeletal (MSK) radiologist whole-body magnetic resonance imaging (WBMRI) practice patterns in an effort to better understand current MSK clinical utilization and the ...need for standardized coding.
Methods
A 12-question survey was created in Survey Monkey®. The survey was e-mailed to Society of Skeletal Radiology (SSR) members on September 19, 2018. The survey included questions on SSR member demographics and on their experience with WBMRI.
Results
One hundred sixty-four of 1454 (11%) SSR members responded to the survey. A minority (32%;
n
= 52/164) of respondents reported that their institutions routinely perform WBMRI. The most common indication was multiple myeloma (78%,
n
= 51/65). The most commonly utilized sequences were coronal short tau inversion recovery (STIR) (79%,
n
= 52/66) and coronal T1 without fat saturation (73%,
n
= 48/66). A large proportion of respondents (48%,
n
= 31/64) did not know the code used for billing WBMRI at their institutions. Of the remaining respondents, 23% (
n
= 15/64) reported use of the bone marrow MRI code, 16% (
n
= 10/64) the chest/abdomen/pelvis combination code, and 9% (
n
= 6/64) the unlisted MRI procedure code.
Conclusion
There is variation in who is responsible for the protocol and interpretation of WBMRI, as well as how the exam is performed and how the exam is coded, which raise barriers to broad implementation. Recent WBMRI guidelines for multiple myeloma and prostate cancer can mitigate many of these barriers, but they do not address the coding and reimbursement challenges. Collaborative multi-society development of a new CPT® code for WBMRI may be a worthwhile endeavor.
Citation frequency is often used in hiring and tenure decisions as an indicator of the quality of a researcher’s publications. In this paper, we examine the influence of discipline, institution, ...journal impact factor, length of article, number of authors, seniority of author, and gender on citation rate of top-cited papers for academic faculty in geography and forestry departments. Self-citation practices and patterns of citation frequency across post-publication lifespan were also examined. Citation rates of the most-highly cited paper for all tenured forestry (
N
= 122) and geography (
N
= 91) faculty at Auburn University, Michigan State University, Northern Arizona University, Oklahoma State University, Pennsylvania State University, Texas A&M University, University of Florida, University of Massachusetts, University of Washington, and Virginia Tech were compared. Foresters received significantly more citations than geographers (
t
= 2.46,
P
= 0.02) and more senior authors received more citations than junior researchers (
r
2
= 0.14,
P
= 0.03). Articles published in journals with higher impact factors also received more citations (
r
2
= 0.28,
P
= 0.00). The median self-citation rate was 10% and there was no temporal pattern to the frequency of citations received by an individual article (
x
2
= 176). Our results stress the importance of only comparing citation rates within a given discipline and confirm the importance of author-seniority and journal rankings as factors that influence citation rate of a given article.
