What are the main causes of radiological errors ?

The radiological exam is often an essential step for establishing a diagnosis. Yet we all know x-ray interpretation is a difficult exercise that requires years of training. Pitfalls are numerous: a good technical quality of the radiograph is necessary, the specificities of the patient (such as race, obesity) are to be considered and finally the identification of patterns is a whole challenge in itself.

When we think about causes of error in reading an x-ray we often think about mis-interpretation: an anomaly is detected but not correctly analyzed. However, the paper from Busby et al. [1] tells us that in reality the most frequent error is missing the pattern :  it accounts for roughly 80% of all errors. The paper goes even further by listing human biases that can explain these misses: peer pressure, fatigue and framing bias are some. After a night shift and expecting a pulmonary edema from the anamnesis, it is quite understandable that a practitioner might miss an important tracheal collapse for instance!

So how to reduce this omission rate? The only solution would be to have a second set of eyes, that is not influenced by external factors, never tired and always with you when you need it. This is the reason why we designed PicoxIA: to accompany veterinarians in their daily practice and help them improve their radiological accuracy without losing any time.

Want to try it? Go to https://picoxia.com and get a free trial or see us at the show 😊