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Diagnostic errors in radiology reports can result in patient harm, lead to unnecessary additional testing or interventions, or otherwise diminish the quality of care delivery.1 ,2 In this issue, Lauritzen et al retrospectively evaluated the impact of a quality assurance process using double reads on changes made to abdominal CT reports requested by referring surgeons.3 The authors address an important topic in this insightful study highlighting the challenges and opportunities related to improving radiology report quality. The authors analysed 1071 consecutive abdominal CT reports on patients referred by surgeons from five public Norwegian hospitals double read by two consultant radiologists over a 17-month period. The request for the second read was initiated at the judgement of the primary radiologist reader who could have been an inexperienced radiologist, an experienced general radiologist, an abdominal radiology subspecialist or a subspecialist in another organ system. Preliminary and final reports were compared for changes and the clinical importance of these changes were rated, on a five-point scale, by at least two gastrointestinal surgeons each with at least 10 years of experience. In addition, the severity of any changes was classified as increased, decreased or unchanged. Of these reports, 146 (14%) were identified as containing clinically important changes; 3 critical, 35 major and 108 intermediate. The severity of the changes was increased in 118 (81%) of reports with clinically important changes. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that important changes were more frequent when the examination was urgent or when the second reader was an abdominal radiologist and less frequent when the first reader was an abdominal radiologist.

The primary goal of the radiologist is to provide the …