As a result, in the majority of cases, incidental findings are being reported on the preliminary read, and, even in cases when they are not, final reports are available within a short time with minimal changes by the attending radiologists.
Whether you or someone you love has cancer, knowing what to expect can help you cope. We do not endorse non-Cleveland Clinic products or services Policy. When developing a lung cancer screening program, the burden of incidental findings should be anticipated, and the possible consequences of incidental findings should be discussed with patients during shared decision-making visits. Prevalence and outcomes of incidental imaging findings: umbrella review. Statistical comparisons and analysis were made for age and gender across the different CT studies performed. Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. This is an open access article distributed under the Another limitation is that we utilized only the discharge paperwork that was given to the patient and did not consult the dictated physician note from the emergency department visit. A study published in Medicine conducted at the Università degli Studi di Milano in Milan, Italy, showed that nearly 70% of incidental findings visible on a non-cardiac chest CT scan were not reported. Three patients required further invasive work-up or treatment.
818 patients were investigated according to the NICE lung guidelines and 197 incidental findings were identified in 175 (21%) patients (Table 1). Epub 2020 Feb 18. Therefore it is imperative of emergency Physicians to inform appropriately these incidental findings as to not overly alarm patients beyond getting appropriate followups with their primary providers. There were 682 CT scans among 600 patients: 199 Abdomen & Pelvis, 405 Head, and 78 Thorax.
As there is currently no way in our institution to retrieve the preliminary findings in a chart review, we were unable to use the actual reports that the emergency physician had available at the time of discharge. There were 13 category I findings (7.0%), 45 category II findings (24.2%) and 128 category III incidental findings (68.8%). Incidental findings on computed tomography (CT) scans are common. Another possibility is that there may be an increase in the identification and recording of incidental findings by radiologists for medical-legal reasons. However, the purpose of the discharge paperwork is to give the patient written instructions on how to appropriately followup on their visit, and so the discharge paperwork should reflect all instructions given to the patient. A total of 530 patients either had normal CT scans or CT scans consistent with acute trauma without incidental findings, while 392 had incidental findings on CT scan with or without evidence of trauma (Tables 1 – 7). Abdomen/pelvis scans had the highest rate of incidental findings at 56.3% (Figure 1). Introduction: B. Wolfson, “Frequency and follow-up of incidental findings on Trauma computed tomography scans: experience at a level one Trauma center,”, W. A. Messersmith, D. F. M. Brown, and M. J. Barry, “The prevalence and implications of incidental findings on ED abdominal CT scans,”, H. Eskandary, M. Sabba, F. Khajehpour, and M. Eskandari, “Incidental findings in brain computed tomography scans of 3000 head Trauma patients,”, R. Hayward, “VOMIT (victims of modern imaging technology)—an acronym for our times,”. Patients age <60 were less likely to have incidental findings ( However, due to the completeness of preliminary reads at our facility, this is not a common event. Costs of workup of incidental thyroid nodules add up. There were 2248 trauma room presentations; 321 patients underwent a total-body CT scan (14.3%).
Incidental thyroid nodules are common whereas thyroid cancer is uncommon. These care paths are based on specialist expertise and national guidelines. The lowest rates were found in whole body PET or PET/CT and chest CT for incidental pulmonary embolism. A few facts about incidental thyroid nodules. Medical Forum uses cookies to improve your experience.
These cookies do not store any personal information. Our finding of a rate of incidental findings of 33.4% is similar to that found in previous studies [4, 5].
We reviewed 320 patients who participated in our lung cancer … The review was published June 18, 2018 in BMJ. Incidental findings cause considerable debate and concern over which patients require significant follow-up, investigations, and/or surveillance. Reimbursement for the screening, including all downstream evaluation after the low-dose CT including the evaluation of screen detected incidental findings, averaged $817 per screened patient. Additionally, 259 patients were recommended for additional diagnostics. Get the latest research from NIH: https://www.nih.gov/coronavirus.
Bhatt A, Yang X, Karnik N, Sill A, Kowdley G. Abdom Radiol (NY).