Why is consensus important?
Even if guidelines are based on well-conducted clinical trials or other unbiased high-quality evidence, repeated studies have also shown that physician practice is often not concordant with existing guidelines.4 There is similar lack of radiologists’ adherence to evidence-based imaging guidelines.5
Several explanations have been proposed for the discrepancy between clinical practice and evidence-based guidelines, including6:
- Lack of awareness of the guidelines
- Lengthy and unclear guidelines
- Decreased willingness to change existing practice patterns
- Absence of embedded guidelines in clinical workflow
- Patient preference