Clinicians’ heuristic assessments of radiographs compared with Kellgren-Lawrence and Ahlbäck ordinal grading: an exploratory study of knee radiographs using paired comparisons

摘要

Ordinal scales provide means for communicating the severity of a condition, but they are affected by cognitive biases, they introduce statistical problems and they sacrifice resolution. Clinicians discern more details than contained in scales, for example, when assessing radiographs, but clinicians’ distinctions are often based on experience-based rules of thumb, that is, heuristics. The objectives of this study are to compare clinicians’ heuristic assessments to ordinal grading, to identify case elements that influence clinicians’ judgements and to present a method for quantifying heuristic assessments.