Repeated Failures In Reading Scans Costing Lives, Ombudsman Says

[naomi24]

//Repeated failures in how CTs, X-rays and other medical scans are being interpreted are leading to avoidable patient deaths and delays in diagnosing cancer, England's health ombudsman has warned.

The most common problems include doctors failing to spot abnormalities, scans being delayed or not carried out, and results not being followed up properly.//

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdjykmlr2vwo

 

Reports like this hardly instil confidence in the NHS.  Is it human error or neglect?

 

[youngmafbog]

Combination of things, but a lot is to do with the poor manner in which the NHS is run especailly poor being IT which could help in this sort of situation.

[Old_Geezer]

Maybe they need to pass the job over to AI.

[youngmafbog]

Well actually yes, that sort of thing.  Of course when real AI comes along then it will help considerably.  But they dont seem to be able to provide the basics in IT so little hope of that.

[mushroom25]

my son works in a MRI dept as a healthcare assistant. as a non-clinician he's not allowed to tell patients whats on the screen, but he says you soon get to know what's being looked at. His team sometimes played a game they called "happy bowel", where folds and contortions sometimes resembled smiley faces. on one occasion they saw half a cat's head, so the operator moved the scanner to see if it was a whole head. it wasn't but in so doing he identified what looked like a pre-tumour. The clinicians were of course grateful but the operator got a "please explain" for scanning outside the contracted area. "i mistakenly fed in the wrong co-ordinates" he said. Which the hospital accepted, very grudgingly.........

[Peter Pedant]

some sensible answes

hi mushie - All tests do the false ngative / false positive thing.

PPV is the stat you want - the test shows positive, what is the chance the patient has the disease

( takes into account, inefficiency, tiredness, being drunk whilst reading the scan)

and yes, AI improves PPV ( being right)

and now back to the craziness that is AB

[davebro3]

PP - you think you are explaining things, but really not...

[Canary42]

But millions of scans are leading to correct diagnoses and appropriate action taken (speaking as a patient who has experienced just such a "rescue"). But of course that doesn't interest the doom and gloom merchants who seem to predominate these days.

[naomi24]

I expect you'd be doom and gloom if you found your life threatening condition had been missed, canary.