“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend”: Unrecognized incidental findings on intraoperative computed tomography during spine instrumentation surgery

Park, Christine; Kouam, Romaric Waguia; Foster, Norah; Abd-El-Barr, Muhammad M.; Goodwin, C. Rory; Karikari, Isaac O.

doi:10.1016/j.clinimag.2020.11.034

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…One nurse missed signs of a heart attack despite detailed documentation of the patient’s dropping blood pressure in their medical records (Jones & Johnstone, 2017 ). And physicians missed evidence of air within the skull in one case and a collapsed lung in another when they were using CT scans to confirm the placement of hardware prior to surgery (Park et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inattentional blindness in medicine

Hults,

Ding,

Xie

et al. 2024

Cogn. Research

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People often fail to notice unexpected stimuli when their attention is directed elsewhere. Most studies of this “inattentional blindness” have been conducted using laboratory tasks with little connection to real-world performance. Medical case reports document examples of missed findings in radiographs and CT images, unintentionally retained guidewires following surgery, and additional conditions being overlooked after making initial diagnoses. These cases suggest that inattentional blindness might contribute to medical errors, but relatively few studies have directly examined inattentional blindness in realistic medical contexts. We review the existing literature, much of which focuses on the use of augmented reality aids or inspection of medical images. Although these studies suggest a role for inattentional blindness in errors, most of the studies do not provide clear evidence that these errors result from inattentional blindness as opposed to other mechanisms. We discuss the design, analysis, and reporting practices that can make the contributions of inattentional blindness unclear, and we describe guidelines for future research in medicine and similar contexts that could provide clearer evidence for the role of inattentional blindness.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%