No comments on being a part of third leading cause of death ?

[y2k_free_radical]

I am surprised.This is all over the news in the past week.Of course,there are similar threads here which appear to go back to 2003.

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[mlw03]

This kind of 'research' is tough to translate to real world applications. I'd also add that the researchers should be more precise with their terminology. Medical misadventure and suicide are MANNERs of death, not CAUSEs. They are also likely liberal in their application of that label. If they call someone with metastatic CRC who dies on the operating table a medical misadventure, I would disagree with them as someone who fills out hundreds of DCs every year. That's a natural death as a result of metastatic CRC. Period. But it makes for a sexy headline on CNN.

 

[Thrombus]

I agree. I have seen very few medical errors causing death and to imply that even 5% of us die to a medical error is absurd.

 

[LADoc00]

This came from the minds of the "Attack on Benghazi was the result of spontaneous protests from a video..."

 

[WEBB PINKERTON]

The "alternative" medicine crowd love studies like this. See, conventional medicine kills they are probably saying. That group is causing all kinds of illness/death pushing anti-vaccination, taking bizarre supplements etc.

 

[Ziehl-Neelsen]

I am surprised.This is all over the news in the past week.Of course,there are similar threads here which appear to go back to 2003.

Did you read the "study"?

http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139

The author took a "mean death rate due to medical error" from a number of previous studies that used dubious methods and applied that rate to the number of US hospital admissions in 2013. The resulting sum was declared the "estimated number of deaths due to medical error in 2013" and posited to be the 3rd leading cause of death in the US.

So in answer to your query: No, I don't comment on junk science. I'd rather caterwaul about the pathology job market.

 

[Thrombus]

Just another fraud imposed on the US Citizenry and all medical professionals by "Big Science", paid for by the US Taxpayer. Nothing in this "study" has anything to do with science. "Big Academic Pathology" should make themselves useful for once and debunk these clowns. I wont hold my breath.

 

[yaah]

This study is really full of holes and suppositions and educated guesses.

So how does it work, by the way? If you have lung cancer and come into the hospital with terminal metastasis, and you get a line infection and then die of sepsis, is that a "medical error/intervention related death"? I suspect it is, even though it really isn't.

 

[mlw03]

This study is really full of holes and suppositions and educated guesses.

So how does it work, by the way? If you have lung cancer and come into the hospital with terminal metastasis, and you get a line infection and then die of sepsis, is that a "medical error/intervention related death"? I suspect it is, even though it really isn't.

This was exactly my point. I don't know an ME's office in North America that would consider that death anything other than a natural death from lung cancer. We may accept the case if family voiced concern because of the infection, but we'd all sign the DC as something to the effect of cause of death Metastatic lung cancer, manner of death Natural.

 

[BAD WAY]

This kind of 'research' is tough to translate to real world applications. I'd also add that the researchers should be more precise with their terminology. Medical misadventure and suicide are MANNERs of death, not CAUSEs. They are also likely liberal in their application of that label. If they call someone with metastatic CRC who dies on the operating table a medical misadventure, I would disagree with them as someone who fills out hundreds of DCs every year. That's a natural death as a result of metastatic CRC. Period. But it makes for a sexy headline on CNN.

i read couple years ago on a blog called skeptical scalpel an insightful post on the reearch paper " to err i human " how the author who eventually wasnot physician btw and went to the extreme and how ridiculously the media covered the topic
and also the CNN made a report on medical mistakes on 2012 and again on 2015 which he criticized it well
http://skepticalscalpel.blogspot.com.eg/2012/06/cnn-makes-mistakes-reporting-10.html
http://skepticalscalpel.blogspot.com.eg/2016/05/are-there-really-250000-preventable.html

 

[lwales]

Why are these errors not considered as cause of death? When a patient dies from one of these their death is recorded as the symptom that brought them into the hospital. Why?

 

[mlw03]

Why are these errors not considered as cause of death? When a patient dies from one of these their death is recorded as the symptom that brought them into the hospital. Why?

I'm not going to give a lecture on proper death certification on here. A true error could be a cause of death, but those are very rare. That would mean a major procedural mistakes, or giving a patient a medication they've voiced an allergy to. Without knowing methods it's hard to comment more precisely. But if a patient has a ruptured AAA and has a laparotomy and dies, I certainly wouldn't call that an error in any sense. And the death is not recorded as the SYMPTOM that brought them into the hospital. If you want to have this discussion with pathologists, you have to be precise in your terminology. That death should be codes as due to the underlying disease that brought them to the attention of the medical system in the first place. In my example, that would be aortic atherosclerosis.