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Wrong Diagnoses are Killing Patients

Many patients in intensive care units are being wrongly diagnosed, and some are dying because doctors fail to spot major conditions such as heart attacks, cancer and pulmonary embolism. Major problems had been missed in 39 percent of the cases studied.The reason, experts say, is not incompetence but that so few autopsies are now performed that doctors cannot learn from their mistakes. Further, doctors place too much faith in sophisticated scanners when making diagnoses.

New Scientist February 18, 2004