Medical Malpractice in Image-Guided Procedures: An Analysis of 184 Cases

To report types and outcomes of a small subset of malpractice lawsuits filed against physicians performing image-guided interventions in the United States.

In total, 1,312 cases involving common image-guided procedures were reviewed from the Westlaw and LexisNexis databases in the United States from 1963 to 2018. Social Security, disability, employment contract, product liability, criminal, and government employment claims were excluded. The final legal cohort comprised 184 (14.0%) cases. They were categorized into vascular (113/184; 61.4%), inferior vena cava filter (n = 22; 12.0%), neurointerventional (n = 13; 7.1%), gastrointestinal and genitourinary (n = 17; 9.2%), foreign body (n = 7; 3.8%), biopsy related (n = 9; 4.9%), and oncologic (n = 3; 1.6%) interventions. Claims were also organized by defendant type and by specialty, complication stage, verdict, and year.

From 2001 to 2018, 58.7% of claims (n = 108) were reported. Procedural complications related to arteriography were most commonly litigated (63/113; 55.8%). Claims arising from intra-procedural and early post-procedural complications were common (84/184; 45.7%). Community hospitals were most often named as defendants (61/184; 33.2%). In reported outcomes, courts sided with defendants in 81.9% (104/127) of the cases, similar to national malpractice trends. Unreported outcomes comprised 31% (57/184) of the data.

For the small subset of claims published within national legal databases, intra-procedural and early post-procedural complications after diagnostic arteriography were most commonly litigated. Most (81.9%) claims with reported outcomes sided with the defendant physician.