Login / RegisterStudy suggests more die from errors in acute care than from breast cancer
Here's a medical shocker. Diagnostic errors in the intensive-care unit may be responsible for more deaths each year than breast cancer.
That's what researchers at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine discovered after reviewing studies examining diagnostic blunders detected through autopsies.
They reported that 28 percent of patients had at least one missed diagnosis at the time of their death. This came after a review of 31 studies involving 5,863 autopsies.
In eight percent of cases, diagnostic error directly contributed to or caused the person's death.
In more than three-quarters of those instances, undetected vascular problems such as heart attacks and strokes, and infections were responsible.
"Our study shows that misdiagnosis is alarmingly common in the acute care setting," lead author Dr. Bradford Winters said in a university news release.
Medical error was in the news a couple of years ago when actor Dennis Quaid told CBS that his newborn twins nearly died in 2007 because of a screwup involving drugs at a Los Angeles hospital. He has since become a strong advocate for patient safety.
Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.
people are dying in hospitals that shouldn't be not only because of medical misdiagnosis, but from incomplete and inaccurate nursing care.
For example, patients die from bowel obstructions related to constipation because no one thought to recognize that anesthetic and narcotics (often ordered post op) halt bowel action and then neglect to provide appropriate interventions to counteract the action of the medication.
Imagine going into hospital with a fractured hip and then later die of a bowel obstruction related to constipation? And it does happen.. far more often that you can know...
The hopsital is a place you want to avoid as long as you possibly can.