I have numbness and pain in my fingers. I had an MRI of the cervical spine taken at an outside hospital. Can I bring the test report without the film to my appointment?

It is advisable to bring a full medical history with you to your appointment, especially for imaging, where the examination report provides very little information compared to the original film. However, it is not recommended to take a picture of the film on a mobile phone and only show it to the attending physician at the consultation. This is because patients often do not have sufficient film-reading skills and the pictures taken often lack clarity, are out of focus and key information is missing, to the detriment of diagnosis.