When right is redundant.

Clinicians frequently see the “right middle lobe” referred to in radiology reports, textbooks, and medical journals. Yet, there is no “left” middle lobe to distinguish it from, save a rare patient with Kartagener syndrome. We do not refer to the lingula as the “left” lingula. “Right” adds nothing to our understanding of the anatomic position of the lobe. So “right” is redundant when talking about the middle lobe. Yet, PubMed has 5,266 right middle lobe references, and a Google Scholars search found 22,900 publications used the phrase in the past 161 years. Th at is the equivalent of the length of two and one-half football fi elds worth of wasted words in just a Google search, nevermind those found in radiology reports, textbooks, or Index Medicus references (in Calibri font size 12, “right” 5 1 cm 3 22,900 search results 5 228.99 m).