Diagnostic errors are an underrecognized source of patient harm, and cardiovascular disease can be challenging to diagnose in the ambulatory setting. According to the recent clinical findings, when doctors miss a diagnosis of cardiovascular disease in an outpatient setting, the patient often has conventional risk factors for coronary artery disease. Researchers looked at 251 closed medical malpractice cases where patients alleged that the general medical practitioner who treated them in an outpatient setting missed a cardiovascular diagnosis.
These cases were more likely to result in higher severity injury than malpractice claims in general, the study showed. The key finding from this outpatient study was that 23% of patients with a misdiagnosis of heart attack or coronary artery disease had a prior history of cardiovascular disease- one of the highest pretest predictors of…
