Page 50 - Diagnostic Radiology - Interpreting the Risks Part One

SVMIC Diagnostic Radiology: Interpreting the Risks

guidelines of a specialty organization are useful in determining

the duty and/or the standard of care applicable to given
situation”. This statement is contradictory on its face but is
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useful to emphasize the importance placed on the Guidelines.

In a broadly distributed survey of radiologists published in
2005, out of 172 members of the ACR who responded that

they had been involved in a lawsuit, 43 of them (25 percent)
stated that the ACR Guidelines were referenced in the lawsuit

in which they were either defendants or experts. As previously
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stated, plaintiffs’ attorneys are intimately familiar with the ACR

Guidelines.

Radiologists who are defendants in malpractice lawsuits can

expect to be browbeat by the plaintiffs’ attorneys during cross-
examination using the ACR Guidelines. Moreover, the plaintiff’s

radiology experts will testify that the Guidelines are reflective
of the standard of care, placing the defendant radiologist in the

unenviable position of sounding like Captain Barbossa from the
movie, Pirates of the Caribbean, referencing the pirate code, “the

code is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules”. 19

Therefore, it is important that all radiologists be familiar with
and, to the extent practical, conform at all times to the ACR

Practice Parameter for Communication of Diagnostic Imaging
Findings. Certainly, if a radiologist’s action or inaction fails

to comply, he or she should have a plausible explanation –
plausible from a jury’s perspective, that is.

17 Stanley v. McCarver, 92 P3d 849 (Ariz. 2004)
18 Kushner DC, Lucey LL, American College of Radiology. Diagnostic radiology reporting in
communication: the ACR Guideline, J Am Coll Radiol 2005; 2:15-21.
19 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (Walt Disney Pictures 2003).

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