Innovation in medical diagnosis--the Scandinavian curiosity.

Fine-needle aspiration biopsy is a major diagnostic tool in Scandinavia, where 8000 such biopsies may be done in a large metropolitan hospital each year. The procedure is rapid, inexpensive, and technologically simple, yet it has found only limited, albeit increasing, acceptance in medical practice outside Scandinavia. Although the differences between Scandinavian and other medical systems may explain why the technique is not used more widely, there seems to be an underlying reluctance among medical communities to accept subjective types of innovation compared with objective innovation.