Agreement between clinical and radiological diagnosis.

Agreement between radiological and clinical diagnosis and the incidence of unexpected findings has been used as an indicator of the diagnostic contribution of radiology. The overall incidence of agreement was 33% - 533 out of 1,604 x-ray examinations. The wide variation in agreement in different radiological examinations is clearly related to the pathological nature of disease and the limitations of radiological techniques. If diagnostic radiology is to be effective its application rather than interpretation in the clinical situation must be emphasized in training programmes.