Road to Radiography

We started looking at the Bony Thorax this week in our positioning class. I expect this section to go rather quickly, and there aren’t many positioning routines that we have to study and practice for this one. We are going to be looking at the AP and PA (bilateral and unilateral) positions and then the posterior and anterior obliques. Each of these will be broken into above and below the diaphragm views. There are only two views of the sternum that we will be working with… the RAO and the lateral. I think the anterior oblique of the sternum will be the most difficult of these exams since the patient rotation is a bit tricky with a 15-20 degree oblique to separate the sternum from the spinal column. The book makes it look easy, but it’s also sort of funny how the patients pictured in the book are average to below average in size. I don’t know where they find these people, but a huge majority of the patients I work with in my clinical setting fall into the hypersthenic category. Making that rotation for the sternum won’t be easy at all with these patients. 

We’ll also be looking at another rather simple procedure as well.  The sternoclavicular joints positioning looks fairly easy with simple PA and RAO/LAO views. 

I think this section is going to be a nice breather before we dive into the skull anatomy and positioning.  I have thumbed ahead in the book to look at these, and the positioning routines don’t seem to be that difficult, but there is a great deal of anatomy to learn in this section…

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Tags: 2nd Semester, RAD-112 //