Hospital Mistakes In The ICU Kill As Many As Breast Cancer

Carl Lowe | Feb 01, 2013 | Comments 0

Medical mistakes made in the intensive care units (ICUs) of hospitals probably kill as many people annually as breast cancer, according to an analysis by Johns Hopkins patient safety experts.

The Hopkins study indicates that these mistakes may kill more than 40,000 people a year.

“Our study shows that misdiagnosis is alarmingly common in the acute care setting,” says Bradford Winters, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study. “To date, there’s been very little research to determine root causes or effective interventions.” Winters also notes that less serious patient safety risks have received greater attention.

Overall, the medical conditions most commonly missed by diagnosticians in the ICU include heart attack; pulmonary embolism, an artery blockage in the lungs; pneumonia; and aspergillosis, a fungal infection that most commonly affects individuals with a weakened immune system. Cumulatively, these four conditions accounted for about one-third of all illnesses that doctors failed to detect.