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Autopsies Reveal Missed Diagnoses

A report in the June 2003 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association says that U.S. researchers estimate that up to 24 percent of autopsies discover a previously undiagnosed condition, many of which may well have been the cause of the patient’s death.

The lead researcher of the study was Dr. Kaveh G. Shojania of the University of California, San Francisco. He says that between four and seven percent of the autopsies that detect diagnostic errors detect class I errors, those that indicate that the patient may have survived had they been properly diagnosed.

This means that of the 850,000 people who die in hospitals in the U.S. each year, 34,850 may have survived had they been diagnosed correctly.

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