Handling incidental findings from imaging within im related research—results from an empirical-ethical study

Abstract

This chapter gives a summary of an empirical-ethical study which was carried out as a sub-project of GANI_MED-Greifswald. The aim of this sub-project was to investigate the reaction of participants, caused by incidental findings from a whole-body MRI in the context of SHIP, an epidemiological study conducted in Western Pomerania, Germany. As well as studying the potentially negative reactions of the participants after being informed of incidental findings, it was examined whether the participant’s subjective perception of health is influenced and whether this leads to a changed risk-benefit evaluation concerning the participation in a MRI within the medical research context. In order to investigate this, an analysis of the currently most important codices and relevant literature were taken into consideration to define the subject of discussion and regulation and thus, to define the subject of research in detail. Afterwards the study was carried out according to a mixed-methods design which showed firstly which kind of stress is indeed a result of participating in the MRI examination and which factors cause this. Furthermore, it was shown that the risk-benefit evaluation and thus, the willingness to participate, had not changed significantly after the whole-body MRI examination. However, this might be due to the fact that the research subjects often misjudged the conditions for participation by overestimating the benefits and underestimating the risks. The chapter ends with a short summary of the deductions which were drawn from this study in order to be implemented into the procedures of GANI_MED.