Can Computers Help Prevent Overlooking Radiographic Incidentalomas?

Radiology is a core part of emergency medicine practice, and inevitably, we will sometimes detect early-stage cancers while looking for other things. Researchers at a Boston emergency department (ED) assessed the frequency with which incidental findings considered by a radiologist to warrant further imaging were noted on ED discharge summaries, and they developed a computer program to identify such cases.

In an analysis of 3235 ED visits with radiology studies, further imaging was recommended in 7.9% of radiology reports, but in 51% of these cases, the discharge summaries did not mention this. In the final validation set of 1635 of the cases, the computer program was fairly sensitive overall, detecting 89% of cases that required further imag…