What the cardiothoracic surgeon wants to know from the radiologist: from X-ray reporting to imaging consultancy and Heart Team membership

In the early days of cardiac surgery, the pretreatment multidisciplinary discussion involved a presentation of the case history and diagnostic imaging by the clinical cardiologist. At this time, most, if not all, cardiac imaging techniques were in the hands of the cardiologist. If the radiologist made a report, this was done relatively late in the clinical process and only concerned the perioperative radiographs. In recent years, multidisciplinary decision-making in the context of a Heart Team has gained an increasingly important role in the process of decision-making with regard to the available therapy options in individual patients. Nevertheless, the concept of the Heart Team is still evolving. The minimal requirements for the Heart Team include the presence of the attending cardiologist, an interventional cardiologist and a cardiac surgeon. Those members of the Heart Team should be aware of the local possibilities, should correctly make conclusions about the available data and should put this information into the clinical context and preference of the patient. In addition, in areas where expertise in cardiac imaging such as CT and MRI is relevant, this would explicitly require expertise of the Heart Team in these specific areas, most often by involving a radiologist, to provide the optimal joint treatment strategy recommendation.

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