Structured report for chest high-resolution computed tomography in patients with connective tissue disease: Impact on the report quality as perceived by referring clinicians

•Completeness and clarity are perceived as high in structured HRCT reports of CTD.•Clinicians perceive high clinical relevance in structured HRCT reports of CTD.•Clinicians preferred HRCT structured reports than narrative reports of CTD. To evaluate the impact on perceived report quality of referring rheumatologists for a chest high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) structured report (SR) template for patients with connective tissue disease (CTD), compared to the traditional narrative report (NR). We retrospectively considered 123 HRCTs in patients with CTD. Three radiologists, blinded to the original NRs they wrote during clinical routine, re-reported each HRCT using an SR dedicated template. We then divided all NR-SR couples into three groups (41 HRCT each). Each group was evaluated by one of three rheumatologists (R1, R2, R3), who expressed their perceived report quality for the respective pools of NRs and SRs in terms of completeness, clarity (both on a 10-points scale), and clinical relevance (on a 5-points scale). The Wilcoxon test and the McNemar test were used for statistical analysis. For each rheumatologist, SR received higher ratings compared to NR for completeness (median ratings: R1, 10 vs. 7; R2, 10 vs. 8; R3, 10 vs. 6, all p