Estimation of Patient Age Based on Plain Chest Radiographs

Patient age is an essential part of a clinical history, but it is not always provided by referring physicians. We assessed the ability of four radiologists with different levels of expertise (first-year resident to professor emeritus) to predict patient age based on postero-anterior and lateral chest radiographs from 171 patients. All four were able to predict age with a mean error of less than 15 years, but there were statistically significant differences among them. Surprisingly, observer experience did not correlate with accuracy of patient age estimation. While many factors probably operate, the estimation of patient age relies heavily on "gestalt."