Diagnostic errors in medicine more widespread than thought

Doctor's office where diagnoses occur

Leanne Jenkins--Mistakes happen; we all say that.  But when they are medical mistakes in diagnosis, some people die while others live in misery with illnesses that are treated incorrectly.  So what are the issues with regard to diagnostic problems, and what is being done about them.

Kaiser is one of the large medical groups that has recently observed the importance of getting correct diagnoses and acknowledges that nationwide many deaths and long-term disabilities are caused by physician error.

This year the New York Daily News reported about a woman in New York City who died as a result of multiple medical errors and a delayed cancer diagnosis that spanned a two-year period.  She reported in February 2010 chest pain and went to an emergency hospital room where she was told she had an asthma condition, after an x-ray had been done.

During the next two years the woman was treated by doctors who never looked at the x-ray.  She was back eventually at the same hospital, and it was at that time the x-ray was finally examined.  She did not have asthma but lung cancer in its final stages.  The woman died, and her life could have been saved had the x-ray been examined two years earlier.

In another case a woman was treated for fibromyalgia and what some doctors maintained was an systemic inflammation.  No one suggested a diagnostic workup for diabetes, despite the fact the woman had indicated that with the condition she often suffered fatigue in the mid afternoons.  Fibromyalgia pain is similar to peripheral neuropathy, and fatigue can occur when blood sugar drops, often about two hours after a meal, which would be the mid afternoon.  By the time she was diagnosed with diabetes, she already had glaucoma and other conditions related to diabetes.  Had she been diagnosed earlier, some of these problems could have been alleviated earlier than they were.

These stories are similar to many people, according to Kaiser reports.  The medical group tells us that wrong diagnoses occurs far more often than people think.

In 1991 surveys revealed that 14 percent of all adverse medical events happened as a result of wrongful diagnoses.  Many of these occurred as a result of doctors failing to look at the results of tests that had been ordered.

When errors occur, often doctors don't find out, and the blame for the resulting problems can be shifted to others.  Many of these errors also go unreported.

These are the facts as outlined by The National Center for Policy Analysis:
- 40,500 diagnostic errors that are fatal occur in intensive care units within American hospitals every year.
- Diagnosis errors are more common than errors involving medication and surgery mistakes, affecting 10-20 percent of all medical cases.
- A 2009 study involving 538 diagnostic errors showed that 28 percent of those errors were fatal, caused permanent disability or threatened the life of the patient.
- Many patients fail to take legal action, making it difficult to estimate how many people are victims.
The problems continue because of the culture of blame and the reluctance to report errors.  In order to reduce legal costs in the United States, as well as medical costs, experts remind us how important it is to reduce the errors.  This can be done by both patient and doctor becoming vigilant and the medical professionals willing to take responsibility for the mistakes instead of covering them up or blaming something or someone else.