You know that you've been around for a LONG time when you use the term "Wet Reading" and a young radiologist doesn't know what you're talking about!

I remember the days when images were done and produced on films (from Kodak, DuPont, etc.). In the early stages of my career in radiology, we sometimes developed the films in a darkroom using tanks filled with chemicals. In the darkroom, we took the films out of the cassettes. We clipped them to racks and then we submerged them in the first chemical which was the developer. After the appropriate time in the developer, we moved them to the fixer tank. After they spent the appropriate time in the fixer tank, we dunked them in a bath of water and hung them up to dry.

If a medical provider needed to know the results of the x-rays, he asked for a "wet reading". That meant that he wanted them to be interpreted before they were even dried.

Then the automatic film processors became the norm in radiology departments. Medical providers, however, continued to ask for "Wet Readings" when they wanted to know the results of the x-rays BEFORE an official report could be dictated and typed.

Nowadays, most radiology departments use PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) and the images are sent to computers without any need for x-ray films. The concept of a "Wet Reading" is now called a "Preliminary Report".

And so it goes in the imaging department of today…