TL;DR review: I have used CaseStacks for several weeks and I cannot recommend it enough. It is an excellent tool for self assessment, exam prep and on-call prep.
Disclosure: This is not a paid review. The opinions are my own and I only endorse products and services that I personally like and believe in. I do get to offer you a discount code (DRDEVRAD10 gets you a 10% discount) and an affiliate link which you can use at no extra cost to you and I will get a commission if you buy something on my recommendation.
What is Casestacks?
It is a website with a large collection of both classic and atypical cases covering multiple modalities with discussion and sample reports.
The cases are organised into courses based on subspecialty and modality. Some of them are offered as Classic teaching cases while other cases of varying difficulty level are collected into Practice cases which is meant to simulate a real life reporting list.
Who is it for?
It is aimed at radiologists in training or early career radiologists:
- who want to practice and gain confidence before on-call responsibilities because there’s always the lingering doubt that we may come across a case that we have not previously dealt with
- who want extra practice in certain subspecialties that they may not enough experience with in their depatment or rotations
- who want to practice for exams with a long case/viva component like the MD/DNB Practical exams or FRCR Long cases or Viva
What did I like about it?
The platform: It is made to be very similar to what real life PACS experience feels like. The cases are high quality, the CT and MRI cases have scrollable stacks with options to change the window setting and tools like Pan/zoom as well – if you sit down in a cold dark room with yellow walls and get interrupted every 5 minutes, you can almost convince yourself that it is a real on-call duty!
The sample reports: Every case is followed by “Findings” and “Report” and I was quite impressed by the quality of them. They did not just “answer” the question the way books do, but they offer high quality reports that mention incidental findings and discuss their importance (or lack thereof) as well.
The Discussion: Important information about the case with labelled images, high yield illustrations and video reviews to wrap things up.
Best feature: Call Simulator
You can create practice sessions tailored to your own needs. This is an excellent way to prepare for both exams and on-call and given their detailed answers and sample reports, I have yet to come across an comparable alternative.
Pricing
There are 3, 6 and 12 month subscriptions available for “Radiographs”, “Cross-sectional” or “All Imaging”. The prices are on the higher side, especially if you are coming from a Low or Middle Income Country, but I feel they will offer a good return on your investment. They have excellent value if you compare it to spending a similar amount on multiple books (textbooks, casebooks, review books).
You want to try it. What next?
Just go to the website and try it for free. You can use my link. They have several free resources that you can check out on the website:
- Limited free cases in most of the courses
- Management of Incidental findings
- Labelled Anatomy
- Normal Paediatric Reference Images