Six Page MRI Report Describes Status Of Every Anatomical Structure

A short story length MRI report of a middle-aged male lumbar spine has taken several minutes to read and interpret by the patient’s Physiotherapist.

“Sweet Jeeezus… Was this radiologist a frustrated novelist in another life? Why has he commented on every single bloody structure?” wondered the Physiotherapist to himself as the patient looked on anxiously.

The Patient experienced a sudden onset of low back pain one week earlier during an innocuous game of “let’s see if I can run a sub 40 minute 10km after not having done any jogging for five years”. The patient arrived at the Physiotherapist’s clinic after being tended to by his GP and immediately referred for an MRI to investigate for the presence of relevant structural pathology, despite not having any indicators of relevant structural pathology.

“It’s a pretty detailed report, hey?”, said the patient with a nervous laugh. “I hope that’s not a bad thing… there’s a few words in there I didn’t like the sound of! The doc was worried I might have a double arched disc twist with a torn nerve, or something like that. But the report says something about plates of arthritis and fecal sac. I thought fecal was shit… is there shit in my spine?”

“FFS” said the Physiotherapist to himself.