Do Beginner Endoscopists Make Erroneous Diagnosis?

Abstract

The present study is a report of all the cases from 1980 to 1988 believed from endoscopic study to be benign but which were conclusively shown by pathological diagnosis to be malignant. Thinking that the endoscopists's experience could be one reason for these errors, an evaluation was made with three categories: EXPERT, MEDIUM TRAINED and BEGINNER. And the percentage of each category in 119 false negative diagnosis cases was calculated. A samples of the population that received endoscopy was taken, the percentage of each category of experience of endoscopists was then determined and the percentage in the population were inferred from this determination. It was then checked whether the percentages of the false negative group fell in or outside of the confidence interval. For the expert endoscopists there was no statistically significant difference between the percentage of the false negative group and the population that received endoscopy. The percentage of medium trained endoscopists was higher in the false negative group than in the population that received endoscopy. The percentage of beginner endoscopists was lower in the false negative group than in the population that received endoscopy. Medium trained endoscopists made more errors than experts, so we might conclude that inexperience is one cause of false negative errors. However, the results of beginner endoscopists seemed to invalidate this conclusion, but this might be explained by the beginners' supervision, and possibly by higher motivation.