Preventing errors in laterality

An error in laterality is the reporting of a finding that is present on the right side as on the left or vice versa. While different medical and surgical specialties have implemented protocols to help prevent such errors, very few studies have been published that describe these errors in radiology reports and ways to prevent them. We devised a system that allows the radiologist to view reports in a separate window, displayed in a simple font and with all terms of laterality highlighted in separate colors. This allows the radiologist to correlate all detected laterality terms of the report with the images open in PACS and correct them before the report is finalized. The system is monitored every time an error in laterality was detected. The system detected 32 errors in laterality over a 7-month period (rate of 0.0007 %), with CT containing the highest error detection rate of all modalities. Significantly, more errors were detected in male patients compared with female patients. In conclusion, our study demonstrated that with our system, laterality errors can be detected and corrected prior to finalizing reports.