How to store and extract "Additional Patient History" from dcm4chee pacsdb

[David Simic]

Hi,

We are considering dcm4chee for use in a small hospital.

However, we're struggling with understanding storage and extraction of "Additional Patient History" from a dcm4chee pacs install. 

For example, "Smoking Status," ie (from http://www.dcm4che.org/docs/dcm4che-2.0.22-apidocs/org/dcm4che2/data/Tag.html#SmokingStatus) :

"""
SmokingStatus

public static final int SmokingStatus
(0010,21A0) VR=CS, VM=1 Smoking Status
"""

OUr question is three-fold:

1. Are we right to assume in the first place that this info, if sent via a properly structure HL7 message, will indeed be store automatically somewhere in the pacsdb?
2. If so, what is the table / col under which this info would be located inside pacsdb (just in case it matters, we're running postgres).
3. What would be a simple way to extract this specific info for testing purposes (ie: are there any command line utils we can leverage).

My guess off the bat is that something like SmokingStatus would be store in the "patient" table under the "pat_attrs" col, however I wasn't able to easily test this hypothesis. An example extracting SmokingStatus would be greatly appreciated.

My apologies if this question is very noobish, we're still getting familiar with dcm4che. So far it's quite fantastic.

Best & thanks,

David