MEDICAL MISDIAGNOSIS

Medical Misdiagnosis

C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D.

Why Doctors So Often Get It Wrong – New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/business/22leonhardt.html

“With all the tools available to modern medicine — the blood tests and M.R.I.’s and endoscopes — you might think that misdiagnosis has become a rare thing. But you would be wrong. Studies of autopsies have shown that doctors seriously misdiagnose fatal illnesses about 20 percent of the time. So millions of patients are being treated for the wrong disease.”

“As shocking as that is, the more astonishing fact may be that the rate has not really changed since the 1930’s. “No improvement!” was how an article in the normally exclamation-free Journal of the American Medical Association summarized the situation.”

I have often mentioned the July, 2000, JAMA article that reported the Medical System as the 3rd leading “cause” of death, 225,000 per year, as well as the feeling by some that the number is three times that!!!!!

“A study of autopsies published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings comparing clinical diagnoses with postmortem diagnoses, for medical intensive care unit patients, revealed that in 26 percent of cases, a diagnosis was missed clinically”

Radiology studies have shown false negative studies in 25 to 32% of cases. And even high volume radiologists detect only 78.6% of breast cancers!

So we can assume that in medicine in general MISDIAGNOSIS occurs 20 to 32% of the time!! Slightly better than flipping a coin! As everyone knows, I have used Medical Intuitives to assist me for 40 years. And I always recommend, if you go that route, get a minimum of two opinions. I suspect that, if the two agree, they are far more likely to be correct than the average physician. Unfortunately, most of those hanging out a shingle as medical intuitives have no certification! If they are not certified by the American Board of Medical Intuition, I would be leery of wasting time and money! The only Medical Intuitives I personally use are Caroline Myss, who no longer does private “readings”, Cay Randall-May, and Dr. Robert Leichtman. There are a couple of others I find highly accurate and helpful, but they do not hold out public claims as Medical Intuitives.

I think it is past time to say in MOST cases of a significant symptom, you should get at lease two independent opinions from physicians as well! Of course, the corollary of that is that any significant recommended treatment should require at least two independent physician opinions as well. The time has also come that I would not accept most diagnoses or treatments without consulting first with a COMPETENT Medical Intuitive!!