A recently published report has revealed that diagnostic errors, such as medical misdiagnosis, is linked to hundreds of thousands of permanent disability cases and deaths in the US each year.
Nearly 800,000 Deaths, Permanent Disability Cases Due to Diagnostic Errors
The report explains that around 371,000 people die and 424,000 have serious disabilities each year due to diagnostic errors. CNN adds that the disabilities include blindness, organ or limb loss, metastasized cancer, and brain damage, among others.
To come up with these estimates, the scientists looked into dozens of previous studies to examine previous misdiagnoses and how they led to serious dangers. CNN adds that this risk was then scaled by new case incident rates in the whole US population.
David Newman-Toker, the study's lead author and a neurology professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the director of Hopkins' Center for Diagnostic Excellence, explains that it is hard to pinpoint the exact number because several diagnosis cases remain undetected. STAT News reports that the number could be fewer or larger than his estimates, with the possibilities ranging from 500,000 to a million. However, in any event, it is the leading cause of disability or death linked to medical malpractice.
While these findings are alarming, the researchers note in the study that patents should not lose faith in the system. Generally, the chances of having serious dangers linked to misdiagnosis are less than 0.1%.
Nevertheless, the researchers are declaring that this phenomenon is a public health emergency, CBS News reports.
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Misdiagnosed Diseases and Conditions
CNN adds that almost 40% of serious outcomes, such as permanent disability and death, are connected to diagnostic errors in five conditions, namely, sepsis, stroke, lung cancer, pneumonia, and venous thromboembolism (a blood clot within the veins).
Dr. Newman-Tolker explains that these are quite common diseases that are also missed quite commonly and are linked to serious dangers.
The study reveals that, though these conditions do not have high misdiagnosis frequencies, they could have the biggest effects.
Aside from this, it was also found that spinal abscesses, which are central nervous system infections, get misdiagnosed around 60% of the time. However, with 14,000 new reported cases annually, this translates to 5,000 serious dangers. CNN adds that this ratio is quite a small proportion of the general diagnostic error burden.
The report also found that stroke was a leading cause of severe harm. The condition is quite common and has a high risk of yielding serious outcomes. However, the condition gets misdiagnosed significantly more than average. The report reveals that among the 950,000 people in the US who deal with stroke each year, it gets missed in around 18% of cases. This translates to around 94,000 caes of severe harm annually.
A heart attack, on the other hand, has a lesser likelihood of misdiagnosis. The report notes that the condition has an error rate of less than 2%.
Diagnostic Errors
Experts say that diagnostic errors are typically due to attributing non-specific signs and symptoms to a more common and potentially less serious condition compared to the actual one that causes the symptoms.
Dr. Daniel Yang, who is an internist and the diagnostic excellence program director from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, explains that diagnostic errors are "errors of omission." The question now is if the outcome could have been prevented if something different was done early on. Dr. Yang explains that in several cases, this is a judgment call that two doctors could disagree with.
He adds that the journey of diagnosis is not a single decision made at a specific time.
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