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marcia.javitt{at}na.amedd.army.mil
AJR has long been known as the journal that builds bridges between research and clinical practice—the "practical" radiology journal. This new initiative is in keeping with the AJR's mission. The women's imaging section will be a comprehensive source of information and cutting-edge research as well as a practical survival guide for radiologists and subspecialists concerned with women's health issues.
Comprehensive women's health care has become a must for successful health care delivery. Women are the key consumers in the modern health care market. They are the most important coordinators of family health care, with greater demands made on their time as working mothers and professionals facing increasingly difficult choices to ensure proper care of their families. A new breed of women's imaging physician has emerged dedicated to the delivery of comprehensive women's health care in radiology. These trained practitioners have a keenly specialized knowledge of the conditions affecting women's health including breast imaging, genitourinary diseases, osteoporosis, cardiovascular and lung disease, pregnancy, and infertility.
Successful women's imaging is a partnership with primary care providers including internists, obstetricians, and gynecologists, as well as with surgeons, oncologists, radiation oncologists, pathologists, gerontologists, and endocrinologists. These specialists are invested with us in a team effort to deliver quality care to women spanning everything from wellness and prevention to treatment and disease management. The intended audience for the women's imaging section of the AJR includes not only radiologists, but also all of these health care providers.
The technology in our armamentarium is increasingly sophisticated. Not only must women's imagers be facile with mammography, sonography, MRI, bone densitometry, sonohysterography, hysterosalpingography, and image-guided biopsy techniques, but we face advances in core science that are stunning. Witness the revolution in nuclear imaging, and the potential applications of advanced imaging techniques such as tomosynthesis for breast imaging, nodal agents for micrometastases such as ferumoxtran, and the promise of proteomics, to name just a few.
Even now, as this commentary goes to press, new technologies are under development for early diagnosis of breast cancer using and improving computer-aided detection. New strategies for screening and risk stratification will affect our practice in the near term, not only for the old foes such as ovarian and breast cancer, but for more recently recognized and increasingly prevalent killers of women: atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and lung cancer. Novel treatments for osteoporosis will incorporate imaging intimately into diagnosis, assessment of treatment response, and surveillance schemes. Notwithstanding the clinical benefits of these discoveries, the financial impact of decreasing morbidity and mortality will be monumental in decreasing the cost of health care.
The creation of a definitive resource for women's imaging within the pages of the AJR is a bold move. Content will cut across many subspecialties and cover many imaging techniques, with unbiased reporting of medical advances to keep you up-to-date. This makes the readership's access to new technology fluid and rapid. With increasing pressure to maintain the highest standards while increasing productivity and cutting costs, it is imperative to provide our readers with the tools they need to practice. Women's imaging within AJR will focus on all of the techniques related to women's imaging while keeping a watchful eye on health care policy, practice management, and personnel shortages.
In keeping with the educational mission of ARRS, look to this resource for the highest-quality educational articles providing CME related to women's imaging. Watch for the development of additional Web-based material offering all of the advantages of interactive learning modules, online access to worldwide resources, and a virtual women's imaging forum, addressing not only the needs of radiologists and physicians, but also of technologists, nurses, and patients.
How will AJR Women's Imaging be different from the thousands of other journals and Web sites currently available on this topic? We will publish original, well-documented, peer-reviewed articles. Our reviews should foster informed medical decision-making. Our readers should feel ready to tackle issues ranging from accreditation to customer service. If we do the job right, the resulting quality of research, patient care, and disease prevention should be optimized and made accessible. This forum is intended to stimulate new ideas, questions, and methodology to move clinical care and scientific knowledge forward.
Our vision is to be the one-stop shop for articles, information, and resources required for the practice of women's imaging. The material should be timely, credible, and enjoyable to read. Essential to the success of this enterprise is the participation of the readers and our nonradiologist colleagues who provide health care to women. We invite one and all to take part in this mission: research, scholarship, quality, education, and public service.
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