Imaging Review Tips for Advance Practice Providers

According to our Advanced Practice Provider (APP) Advisory Board, imaging review, a key aspect of mild^® patient candidate identification, is often not included in initial schooling. To help APPs learn the basics of image review, become more familiar with identifying anatomical landmarks, and understand how to confirm if a patient is a candidate for the mild^® Procedure, we asked James Lynch—an APP with the Pain Consultants of San Diego—to walk us through his tips and techniques for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) review. In the following article, he shares pearls for becoming confident in imaging review and provides a series of videos so you can follow his step-by-step approach to determine if patients with lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) should make the move to mild^®.

As an APP in an Interventional Pain Medicine practice that offers the mild^® Procedure, reviewing MRI images to determine the presence of hypertrophic ligamentum flavum (HLF) is a critical aspect of my role. Prior to joining this practice, I had very little experience reviewing MRI images. It was not part of the core curriculum while training to become an APP, and it was not an area that I felt very confident in. I’ve become more familiar and proficient with imaging review; however, I can say that it’s much more straightforward than it may initially seem. Through hands-on experience, by sharing clinical pearls among peers, and by watching step-by-step videos like those included in this article, I became competent, comfortable, and confident performing image reviews to identify mild^® patient candidates—and I know other APPs can too.