Abstract
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines an error as an act that through ignorance, deficiency, or accident departs from or fails to achieve what should be done. Errors in medicine can arise from different causes including technical failure, perceptual problem, cognitive biases, system errors, etc., and mitigation of these errors requires a thorough understanding of the root causes in each scenario since it may be multifactorial. Errors in radiology are unique within the practice of medicine, since the missed imaging finding or misinterpretation of an imaging examination stays for posterity and can be accessed easily much later in time, unlike errors in clinical examinations that often are not accessible for investigation at a later time. They are also unique due to the inherent differences in the acquisition and interpretation of imaging examinations and are more prone toward perceptual and cognitive biases.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Pope JV, Edlow JA. Avoiding misdiagnosis in patients with neurological emergencies. Emerg Med Internat. 2012;2012:1–10.
Pinto A, Reginelli A, Pinto F, et al. Errors in imaging patients in the emergency setting. Br J Radiol. 2016;89:20150914.
Caranci F, Tedeschi E, Leone G, et al. Errors in neuroradiology. Radiol Med. 2015;120(9):795–801.
Goldstein JN, Camargo CA Jr, Pelletier AJ, et al. Headache in United States emergency departments: demographics, work-up and frequency of pathological diagnoses. Cephalalgia. 2006;26(6):684–90.
Edlow JA, Panagos PD, Godwin SA, et al. Clinical policy: critical issues in the evaluation and management of adult patients presenting to the emergency department with acute headache. Ann Emerg Med. 2008;52(4):407–36.
Edlow JA, Caplan LR. Avoiding pitfalls in the diagnosis of subarachnoid hemorrhage. N Engl J Med. 2000;342(1):29–36.
Ramirez-Lassepas M, Espinosa CE, Cicero JJ, et al. Predictors of intracranial pathologic findings in patients who seek emergency care because of headache. Arch Neurol. 1997;54:1506–9.
Linn FH, Wijdicks EF, van der Graff Y, et al. Prospective study of sentinel headache in aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage. Lancet. 1994;344:590–3.
Neil-Dwyer G, Lang D. Brain attack’ — aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage: death due to delayed diagnosis. J R Coll Physicians. 1997;31:49–52.
Mayer PL, Awad IA, Todor R, et al. Misdiagnosis of symptomatic cerebral aneurysm: prevalence and correlation with outcome at four institutions. Stroke. 1996;27:1558–63.
Kassell NF, Torner JC, Haley EC Jr, et al. The international cooperative study on the timing of aneurysm surgery. 1. Overall management results. J Neurosurg. 1990;73:18–36.
van Gijn J, van Dongen KJ. The time course of aneurysmal haemorrhage on computed tomograms. Neuroradiology. 1982;23:153–6.
Morgenstern LB, Luna-Gonzales H, Huber JC Jr, et al. Worst headache and subarachnoid hemorrhage: prospective, modern computed tomography and spinal fluid analysis. Ann Emerg Med. 1998;32:297–304.
Van der Wee N, Rinkel GJ, Hasan D, et al. Detection of subarachnoid haemorrhage on early CT: is lumbar puncture still needed after a negative scan? J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1995;58:357–9.
Edlow JA, Rabinstein A, Traub SJ, et al. Diagnosis of reversible causes of coma. Lancet. 2014;384:2064–76.
Liman TG, Bohner G, Heuschmann PU, et al. The clinical and radiological spectrum of posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome: the retrospective Berlin PRES study. J Neurol. 2012;259:155–64.
Roth C, Ferbert A. The posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome: what’s certain, what’s new? Pract Neurol. 2011;11:136–44.
Itri JN, Patel SH. Heuristics and cognitive error in medical imaging. Am J Roentgenol. 2018;210(5):1097–105.
Alamoudi U, Al-Sayed AA, AlSallumi Y, et al. Acute calcific tendinitis of the longus colli muscle masquerading as a retropharyngeal abscess: a case report and review of the literature. Int J Surg Case Rep. 2017;41:343–6.
Zibis AH, Giannis D, Malizos KN, et al. Acute calcific tendinitis of the longus colli muscle: case report and review of the literature. Eur Spine J. 2013;22(Suppl 3):S434–8.
Bruno MA, Walker EA, Abujudeh HH. Understanding and confronting our mistakes: the epidemiology of error in radiology and strategies for error reduction. Radiographics. 2015;35(6):1668–76.
Ratnaike TE, Hastie H, Gregson B, et al. The geometry of brain contusion: relationship between site of contusion and direction of injury. Br J Neurosurg. 2011;25(3):410–3.
Lee CS, Nagy PG, Weaver SJ, et al. Cognitive and system factors contributing to diagnostic errors in radiology. Am J Roentgenol. 2013;201(3):611–7.
Waite S, Scott J, Gale B, et al. Interpretive error in radiology. Am J Roentgenol. 2017;208(4):739–49.
Savage NM, Alleyne CH, Vender JR, et al. Dural-based metastatic carcinomas mimicking primary CNS neoplasia: report of 7 cases emphasizing the role of timely surgery and accurate pathologic evaluation. Int J Clin Exp Pathol. 2011;4(5):530–40.
Carrion DM, Carrion AF. Non-ketotic hyperglycemia hemichorea-hemiballismus and acute ischemic stroke. BMJ Case Rep. 2013;2013:bcr2012008359.
Wilson TJ, Than KD, Stetler WR, et al. Non-ketotic hyperglycemic chorea-hemiballismus mimicking basal ganglia hemorrhage. J Clin Neurosci. 2011;18(11):1560–1.
Ashman CJ, Yu JS, Wolfman D. Satisfaction of search in osteoradiology. Am J Roentgenol. 2000;175(2):541–4.
Provenzale JM, Kranz PG. Understanding errors in diagnostic radiology: proposal of a classification scheme and application to emergency radiology. Emerg Radiol. 2011;18(5):403–8.
Tversky A, Kahneman D. Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and biases. Science. 1974;185:1124–31.
Gunderman RB. Biases in radiologic reasoning. Am J Roentgenol. 2009;192:561–4.
Block J, Funder DC. Social roles and social perception: individual differences in attribution and error. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1986;51:1200–7.
Donald JJ, Barnard SA. Common patterns in 558 diagnostic radiology errors. J Med Imaging Radiat Oncol. 2012;56:173–8.
Quekel LG, Kessels AG, Goei R, van Engelshoven JM. Miss rate of lung cancer on the chest radiograph in clinical practice. Chest. 1999;115:720–4.
Rosenkrantz AB, Bansal NK. Diagnostic errors in abdominopelvic CT interpretation: characterization based on report addenda. Abdom Radiol. 2016;41:1793–9.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Torres, C., Zakhari, N., Rivas-Rodriguez, F., Guarnizo-Capera, A., Srinivasan, A., Nunez, D. (2019). Mistakes in Imaging Interpretation of Traumatic and Non-traumatic Brain Emergencies. In: Patlas, M., Katz, D., Scaglione, M. (eds) Errors in Emergency and Trauma Radiology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05548-6_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05548-6_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-05547-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-05548-6
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)