Retrospective Radiology Research: Do We Need Informed Patient Consent?

Abstract

While knowledge of the population’s view on the need for informed consent for retrospective radiology research may provide valuable insight into how an optimal balance can be achieved between patient rights versus an expedited advancement of radiology science, this is a topic that has been ignored in the literature so far. To investigate the view of the general population, survey data were collected from 2407 people representative of the Dutch population. The results indicate that for non-commercial institutions, especially hospitals (97.4 per cent), respondents agree with the retrospective use of imaging data, although they generally indicate that their explicit consent is required. However, most respondents (63.5 per cent) would never allow commercial firms to retrospectively use their imaging data. When including only respondents who completed the minimally required reading time of 12.3 s to understand the description about retrospective radiology research given in the survey (n = 770), almost all (98.9 per cent) mentioned to have no objections for their imaging data to be used by hospitals for retrospective research, with 57.9 per cent indicating their consent to be required and 41.0 per cent indicating that explicit patient consent to be unnecessary. We conclude that the general population permits retrospective radiology research by hospitals, and a substantial proportion indicates explicit patient consent to be unnecessary when understanding what retrospective radiology research entails. However, the general population’s support for the unrestricted retrospective use of imaging data for research purposes without patient consent decreases for universities not linked to hospitals, other non-commercial institutions, government agencies, and particularly commercial firms.