Obsolete Radiology Skills

The Obsolete Skills blog has a large compendium of skills that are, well, obsolete. (via Daring Fireball)

A partial list of the items collected there:

• Dialing a rotary phone
  
• Putting a needle on a vinyl record
  
• Changing tracks on an eight-track tape
  
• Shorthand
  
• Using a slide rule

This got me to wondering what a similar list of obsolete skills for a radiologist might look like. Here are some of my random conjectures:

Obsolete radiologic procedures (a very partial list):

• pneumopelvigraphy
  
• pneumoencephalography
  
• silicon foam enema of colon (this one still gives me the creeps)
  
• xeromammography
  
• ascending lumbar venography for lumbar disc disease
  

A pneumoencephalogram, circa 1919

Film skills dying out due to the move to digital imaging (some are not yet completely dead):

• exposing, developing, duplicating, hanging or interpreting actual films
  
• recovering silver washed out of film emulsion during developing
  
• using a "hot light" to view really dark films
  
• using a goniometer to measure scoliosis angles on spine films
  
• photographing films for scientific publications
  
• giving lectures with 35 mm slides and a projector

Measuring the Cobb angle in a spine with scoliosis

Snarky things that might be listed by non-radiologists:

• using a stethoscope
  
• remembering how to do a physical exam
  
• having any clinical skills whatsoever

Anyone working in medicine for very long will have no trouble thinking of plenty more examples in all three categories. Feel free to add others to the comment section for this post.