Valoración moral del error diagnóstico radiológico en estomatología

the terms moral and ethics have been used to refer to a same concept: the set of principles and norms of behaviour that regulate the relations among men. the moral category designates a set of principles, norms, values and ideals that are part of the social and spiritual life. on the other hand, ethics is the philosophical theory that explains and analyzes these phenomena. professional ethics deals with the study and theoretic foundation of the essence and particularities of the development of professional moral in society. an integrating part of ethics is the medical ethics and is essence is the physician-patient relation, which is determined, among other factors, by the personality traits of the subjects, by the levels of information and communication that are established, by the depth with which the disease is analyzed, and by the patient′s response (active or not) to treatment. it also includes the diagnostic error, the professional secret and the experimentation with human beigns. taking into account the meaning of the diagnostic error, mainly in dental radiology, we introduce ourselves into its moral assessment, since the health professional (stomatologist) requires a great capacity to apply this technique during the exercise of his career. that′s why, we make a moral assessment of the diagnostic error and its expression in a particular branch: stomatology.