Adrenal incidentaloma: prevalence and referral patterns from routine practice in a large UK university teaching hospital

Context Adrenal incidentalomas are increasingly being identified during unrelated imaging. Unlike AI clinical management, data on referral patterns in routine practice are lacking. Objective To identify factors associated with AI referral Design We linked data from imaging reports and outpatient bookings from a large UK teaching hospital. We examined; (i) AI prevalence and (ii) pattern of referral to endocrinology, stratified by age, imaging modality, scan anatomical site, requesting clinical specialty and temporal trends. Patients Utilising key radiology phrases to identify scans reporting potential AI, we identified 4,097 individuals from 479,945 scan reports (2015-19). Main Outcome Measures Prevalence of AI and referral rates Results Overall, AI lesions were identified in 1.2% of scans. They were more prevalent in abdomen CT and MRI scans (3.0% and 0.6%, respectively). Scans performed increased 7.7% year-on-year from 2015-19, with a more pronounced rise in the number with AI lesions (14.7% pa). Only 394/4097 patients (9.6%) had a documented endocrinology referral code within 90 days, with medical (11.8%) more likely to refer than surgical (7.2%) specialties (p<0.001). Despite prevalence increasing with age, older patients were less likely to be referred (p<0.001). Conclusions While overall AI prevalence appeared low, scan numbers are large and rising; the number with identified AI are increasing still further. The poor AI referral rates, even in centres such as ours where dedicated AI multi-disciplinary team meetings and digital management systems are used, highlights the need for new streamlined, clinically-effective systems and processes to appropriately manage the AI workload.