Medscape October 1, 2024
Common complaints of abdominal pain, fever, shortness of breath, or rash can signal more serious disease that should be referred to specialty care or might be related to benign conditions.
Combine the vague nature of many patients’ descriptions and the pressure of short visits, and clinicians have a recipe for all manner of diagnostic error.
An estimated 5% of US adults who seek outpatient care each year experience a diagnostic error. Most Americans will eventually have this experience, according to a 2015 report from the National Academy of Medicine.
The most frequently missed diagnoses in primary care involve conditions such as pneumonia, decompensated congestive heart failure, acute renal failure, cancer, urinary tract infection, and pyelonephritis.
“It’s not one or two...
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