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Management of Incidental Findings in the German National Cohort

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Incidental Radiological Findings

Part of the book series: Medical Radiology ((Med Radiol Diagn Imaging))

Abstract

The German National Cohort is a long term, multicenter, population-based cohort study currently undertaken in Germany with the goal of investigating the development of common chronic diseases. As part of this investigation, 30.000 out of the total of 200.000 participants are being subjected to a whole-body 3-Tesla MR imaging without contrast agents. To help with the implementation of national and international ethical guidelines a system was developed to classify and report incidental findings that might be detected on imaging and possibly pose a risk to the participant’s health. This system focuses on guiding radiologists in the decision of reporting or not-reporting a finding in an attempt to balance the risk of over- and under-reporting, and thus, to minimize false positives and false negatives. The cornerstone of that process is a list specifying findings and separating them into report-worthy and not-report-worthy. For defining incidental findings, study specific limitations and confounders had to be taken into account. This book chapter details the necessary steps to develop such a system, illustrates the particular challenges and summarizes the ethical dilemmas with such a system. Further, technical and quality assurance tools are presented to guarantee high quality and consistency for incidental finding reporting in long-term, multicenter studies such as the German National Cohort.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 110, Heidelberg, 69120, Germany

    Robert C. Bertheau, Oyunbileg von Stackelberg, Sabine Weckbach, Hans-Ulrich Kauczor & Christopher L. Schlett

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  1. Robert C. Bertheau
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  2. Oyunbileg von Stackelberg
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  3. Sabine Weckbach
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  4. Hans-Ulrich Kauczor
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  5. Christopher L. Schlett
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robert C. Bertheau .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

    Sabine Weckbach

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Bertheau, R.C., von Stackelberg, O., Weckbach, S., Kauczor, HU., Schlett, C.L. (2016). Management of Incidental Findings in the German National Cohort. In: Weckbach, S. (eds) Incidental Radiological Findings. Medical Radiology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/174_2016_63

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/174_2016_63

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-42579-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-42581-8

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