American Journal of Roentgenology, Vol 170, 863-867, Copyright © 1998 by American Roentgen Ray Society

ARTICLES

Perceptual errors and negligence

L Berlin and RW Hendrix
Department of Radiology, Rush North Shore Medical Center, Skokie, IL 60076, USA.

Radiologic errors continue to be made at a rate that has changed little over the past 50 years, despite a variety of methods that have been proposed to reduce such errors. Many of these methods, as well as other steps that can be taken to decrease errors, are described elsewhere [6, 31, 32]. However, the question of whether a missed radiographic diagnosis constitutes malpractice has confounded radiologists, patients, referring physicians, attorneys, jurors, and judges for decades, and it is not likely that the question will be resolved to the satisfaction of any of these parties in the foreseeable future. Against this backdrop, radiologists continue to be subjected to malpractice litigation more for missing radiographic diagnoses than for any other reason. Moreover, radiologists who are sued for missing diagnoses are likely to have more indemnification paid on their behalf to satisfy a settlement or adverse jury verdict than for any other malpractice allegation. Assuredly, it is difficult to defend a radiologist who has failed to perceive a radiographic abnormality that in retrospect can be readily perceived by medical and nonmedical observers alike. Nonetheless, solid defense-supporting data are available that, at times, can be presented to a jury successfully to achieve vindication for a defendant radiologist. These data include statistics regarding the frequency of errors committed by radiologists and other physicians during the course of ordinary everyday practice, the factors that cause varying conspicuity of radiographic densities, the limitations of normal human visual perception, and evidence that the process by which the radiologist originally rendered the interpretation was free of deficiency.
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