Road to Radiography

I felt cheated after this morning’s written test on spinal positioning.  I’m so used to seeing questions worded in ways that are designed to trip us up, I read too far into one of my questions and got it wrong. 

The question was:  What is the transverse centering position for the posterior oblique lumbar spine x-ray?

The interesting part of this was that I had just done a LPO lumbar in my physical positioning test in lab an hour earlier.  I’m fully aware that the proper CR centering point for this exam is 2″ medial to the upside ASIS.  No problem… Easy answer…

I can’t remember what all four of my multiple choice options were, but two of them were as follows:

A. 2″ medial to upside ASIS
B. ASIS

I chose B.  The reason I chose B is because of the way the question was worded.  Why were we asked for the TRANSVERSE centering position?  The plane on which the ASIS is found is a transverse plane of the human body.  When you introduce the fact of a point 2″ medial to the upside ASIS, you have introduced the intersection of a transverse plane and a sagittal plane.  I made an assumption that the question wording was designed to make me pick the obvious answer rather than the correct one, and I was wrong. 

Oh well… I made a 92.8 on the test, but this question kept me just below the level of an A…

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Tags: 2nd Semester, RAD-112 //