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Assessment of Medical Students' Knowledge of Imaging Methods for Bone Sarcomas

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Abstract

Cancer is a leading cause of death in Brazil and worldwide. However, Brazilian medical education fails to include oncology as an essential topic. This creates a gap between the health status of the population and medical education. Bone sarcomas fall into both the group of malignant neoplasms and rare diseases and are thus doubly influenced by misinformation. To assess medical students' knowledge of imaging diagnostic methods for bone sarcomas. A cross-sectional, quantitative study was undertaken by obtaining the responses of medical students to a questionnaire containing radiographic images and questions about the radiological aspects of bone sarcomas. The categorical variables were compared using the chi-square test. The level of significance was 5% for all the tests. SPSS software version 25.0 was used for the analysis. A total of 325 responses were collected, with 72% of the participants having no interest in oncology and 55.6–63.9% not knowing how to diagnose a periosteal reaction on bone radiography. Only 11.1–17.1% of the students correctly interpreted the radiographic image of osteosarcoma. Medical students fail to correctly interpret images of bone sarcomas. It is important to promote oncology undergraduate education in general and to include the approach to bone sarcomas in this context.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, APDL, upon reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Post-Graduation, Faculty of Medical Sciences of Minas Gerais, Alameda Ezequiel Dias 275/3º - Centro, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil

    Pedro Alcântara Botelho Machado & Ana Paula Drummond-Lage

  2. School of Medicine, Faculty of Medical Sciences of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil

    Gabriella Freitas Pereira Bartolomeu & Alycia Madureira Handeri

  3. Department of Surgery, Oncad, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil

    Alberto Julius Alves Wainstein

Authors
  1. Pedro Alcântara Botelho Machado
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  2. Gabriella Freitas Pereira Bartolomeu
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  3. Alycia Madureira Handeri
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  4. Alberto Julius Alves Wainstein
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  5. Ana Paula Drummond-Lage
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Contributions

Pedro Alcântara Botelho Machado: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing-original draft.

Gabriella Freitas Pereira Bartolomeu: Methodology, Investigation, Writing-original draft.

Alycia Madureira Handeri: Methodology, Investigation, Writing-original draft.

Alberto Julius Alves Wainstein: Conceptualization.

Ana Paula Drummond Lage: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing-review and editing, Supervision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ana Paula Drummond-Lage.

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Machado, P.A.B., Bartolomeu, G.F.P., Handeri, A.M. et al. Assessment of Medical Students' Knowledge of Imaging Methods for Bone Sarcomas. J Canc Educ 38, 1571–1576 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-023-02301-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13187-023-02301-z

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