Diagnostic Errors Found in 1 of 4 ICU Patient Deaths

HealthLeaders Media |  Cheryl Clark, for HealthLeaders Media, August 28, 2012

As many as 40,500 American adults may die in hospital intensive care units each year because their critical care teams didn’t accurately diagnose their illnesses, according to a Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine review of 30 international papers that examined autopsy results.

That’s more people than die each year of breast cancer in the U.S. or from bloodstream infections acquired in the ICU, the researchers say. And many more patients suffer harm from care provided for the wrong condition.  Read more