Incidental Findings: Definition of the Concept

Abstract

In a broad sense, any findings can be called incidental that occur in the context of medical diagnostics and that potentially affect the health (including the reproductive capacities) of a living being – if the diagnostic means were not intended to produce such findings. It would be wrong to only talk about an incidental finding once the relevance for the health or reproductive capacity of the concerned individual has been established. The concept of an incidental finding rather includes – in its broad as well as narrow sense, which will be explained in the next paragraph – both marginal findings with no clinical relevance and false positive findings. This use of the concept makes sense, because the artefactual character of false positive findings in particular usually only becomes clear after further evaluation. Since this evaluation would not take place without the misleading primary finding, the concept of a finding cannot plausibly depend on the factual correctness or clinical relevance of diagnostic discoveries.

This chapter is derived from my handbook entry Schmücker (2013).