To evaluate whether a natural language processing system, SymText, was comparable to human interpretation of chest radiograph reports for identifying the mention of a central venous catheter (CVC), and whether use of SymText could detect patients who had a CVC.

To identify patients who had a CVC, we performed two surveys of hospitalized patients. Then, we obtained available reports from 104 patients who had a CVC during one of two cross-sectional surveys (ie, case-patients) and 104 randomly selected patients who did not have a CVC (ie, control-patients).

A 600-bed public teaching hospital.

Chest radiograph reports were available from 124 of the 208 participants. Compared with human interpretation, SymText had a sensitivity of 95.8% and a specificity of 98.7%. The use of SymText to identify case- and control-patients resulted in a sensitivity of 43% and a specificity of 98%. Successful application of SymText varied significantly by venous insertion site (eg, a sensitivity of 78% for subclavian and a sensitivity of 3.7% for femoral). Twenty-six percent of the case-patients had a femoral CVC.

Compared with human interpretation, SymText performed well in interpreting whether a report mentioned a CVC. In patient populations with less frequent CVC placement in femoral veins, the sensitivity for CVC detection likely would be higher. Applying a natural language processing system to chest radiograph reports may be a useful adjunct to other data sources to automate detection of patients who had a CVC.