Medical Mistakes Kill 100

7/29/2019 Medical Mistakes Kill 100

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Medical Mistakes Kill 100,000+ Americans AYear

If a Jumbo Jet crashed and killed 280 people everyday.. 365 days a year.. year after year.. would you be concerned about flying?? Would you question the Federal Aviation

Administration? Would you demand answers?? Think about it .. close to 100,000 peopledying every year from plane crashes. Sounds Ridiculous??!!

Well think again.. what if you were told that over 100,000 people are killed and over 2million people maimed and disabled every year .. year after year from modernmedicine.. would you believe it??

Well these may be my words.. but read the following articles from the most respectedmedical journals and institutions (Journal of the American Medical Association, HarvardUniversity, Centers for Disease Control, British medical journal The Lancet, NewEngland Journal of Medicine and national news (New York Times, Washington Post,CNN, US World Report) and you be the judge..

Read on...................

Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Dr. Starfield hasdocumented the tragedy of the traditional medical paradigm in the following statistics:

Deaths

Per

Year Cause

106,000 Non-error, negative effects of drugs

80,000 Infections in hospitals

45,000 Other errors in hospitals

12,000 Unnecessary surgery



7,000 Medication errors in hospitals

250,000 Total deaths per year from iatrogenic* causes

* The term iatrogenic is defined as "induced in a patient by a physician's activity,

manner, or therapy. Used especially to pertain to a complication of treatment."

Furthermore, these estimates of death due to error are lower than those in a recentInstitutes of Medicine report. If the higher estimates are used, the deaths due toiatrogenic causes would range from 230,000 to 284,000. Even at the lower estimateof 225,000 deaths per year, this constitutes the third leading cause of death in the U.S.

Dr. Starfield offers several caveats in the interpretations of these numbers:

First, most of the data are derived from studies in hospitalized patients.

Second, these estimates are for deaths only and do not include the many negativeeffects that are associated with disability or discomfort.

Third, the estimates of death due to error are lower than those in the IOM report. If thehigher estimates are used, the deaths due to iatrogenic causes would range from230,000 to 284,000. In any case, 225,000 deaths per year constitutes the third leadingcause of death in the United States, after deaths from heart disease and cancer. Even if these figures are overestimated, there is a wide margin between these numbers of deaths and the next leading cause of death (cerebro-vascular disease).

Another analysis concluded that between 4% and 18% of consecutive patients

experience negative effects in outpatient settings, with:

116 million extra physician visits 77 million extra prescriptions 17 million emergency department visits 8 million hospitalizations 3 million long-term admissions 199,000 additional deaths $77 billion in extra costs

The high cost of the health care system is considered to be a deficit, but it seems to be

tolerated under the assumption that better health results from more expensive care.However, evidence from a few studies indicates that as many as 20% to 30% of patients receive inappropriate care. An estimated 44,000 to 98,000 among thesepatients die each year as a result of medical errors.

This might be tolerable if it resulted in better health, but does it? Out of 13 countries in arecent comparison, the United States ranks an average of 12th (second from the



bottom) for 16 available health indicators. More specifically, the ranking of the U.S. onseveral indicators was:

13th (last) for low-birth-weight percentages 13th for neonatal mortality and infant mortality overall

11th for post-neonatal mortality 13th for years of potential life lost (excluding external causes) 11th for life expectancy, at 1 year for females, 12th for males 10th for life expectancy, at 15 years for females, 12th for males 10th for life expectancy, at 40 years for females, 9th for males 7th for life expectancy, at 65 years for females, 7th for males 3rd for life expectancy, at 80 years for females, 3rd for males 10th for age-adjusted mortality The poor performance of the U.S. was recently confirmed by a World Health

Organization study which used different data and ranked the United States as15th among 25 industrialized countries.

It has been known that drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. Thismakes it clear that the more frightening number is that doctors are the third leadingcause of death in this country, killing nearly a quarter million people a year. Thesestatistics are further confused because most medical coding only describes the cause of organ failure and does not identify iatrogenic causes at all.

Care -- not treatment -- is the answer. Drugs, surgery and hospitals becomeincreasingly dangerous for chronic disease cases. Facilitating the God-given healingcapacity by improving the diet, exercise, and lifestyle is the key. Effective interventionsfor the underlying emotional and spiritual wounding behind most chronic disease is

critical for the reinvention of our medical paradigm. These numbers suggest thatreinvention of our medical paradigm is called for.

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- - - - - - - - - - - - By Dena Bunis

Dec. 7, 1999 | Representatives from all quarters of the health-care debate came together in the White House Rose Garden Tuesday to get behind a pretty simple premise:Health-care workers shouldn't make the kind of mistakes that cost the lives of as manyas 98,000 patients a year.

Flanked by representatives of the health-care industry, business, labor and government,President Clinton signed an executive memorandum directing his health-care qualitytask force to analyze last week's Institute of Medicine study that quantified the deathsattributable to medical errors, many of them as a result of wrong prescription-drugdoses.



The independent study estimated that medical mistakes kill between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans each year. About 7,000 deaths were attributed to errors in prescribing or dispensing drugs. The IOM found flaws in the way hospitals, clinics and pharmaciesoperate. "Once you know about a problem, you're under a moral obligation to deal withit," Clinton said when asked whether admitting mistakes might expose health-care

professionals to increased lawsuits. "Whatever the consequences are, we have to goforward."

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Health care's deadly secret:Accidents routinely happen

By Andrea GerlinINQUIRER STAFF WRITER

The Medical College of Pennsylvania Hospital is a typicalteaching hospital. It is known for cutting-edge researchprograms, for training medical students and newly graduateddoctors, and for providing advanced medical care.

It is also representative of modern American hospitals inanother respect: In the last decade alone, records show,hundreds of MCP Hospital patients have been seriouslyinjured, and at least 66 have died after medical mistakes.

The hospital's internal records cite 598 incidents reported by

medical professionals to the hospital administration in the lastdecade. In some of those cases, patients or survivors were never told that the injurieswere caused by medical errors. None of the doctors involved in the incidents wassubjected to disciplinary action.

For patients of all ages, serious injury and death caused by medical errors are well-known facts of life in the medical community. But they are rarely reported to the generalpublic.

MCP Hospital's records came to light only because of bankruptcy proceedings last year,when its new owner publicly filed a detailed account of the 598 incidents reported at the

facility from January 1989 through June 1998.

Those numbers mirror what is happening across the country. Lucian Leape, a HarvardUniversity professor who conducted the most comprehensive study of medical errors inthe United States, has estimated that one million patients nationwide are injured byerrors during hospital treatment each year and that 120,000 die as a result.

That number of deaths is the equivalent of what would occur if a jumbo jet crashed

Walter Nawracay died after brainsurgery.



every day; it is three times the 43,000 people killed each year in U.S. automobileaccidents.

"It's by far the number one problem" in health care, said Leape, an adjunct professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health.

In their study, Leape and his colleagues examined patient records at hospitalsthroughout the state of New York. Their 1991 report found that one of every 200patients admitted to a hospital died as a result of a hospital error.

Researchers such as Leape say that not only are medical errors not reported to thepublic, but those reported to hospital authorities represent roughly 5 to 10 percent of thenumber of actual medical mistakes at a typical hospital.

"The bottom line is we have a system that is terribly out of control," said Robert Brook, aprofessor of medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles. "It's really a joke to

worry about the occasional plane that goes down when we have thousands of peoplewho are killed in hospitals every year."

Brook's recognition of the extent of hospital errors is shared by many of medicine'sleaders.

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Study slams medical error rate in nation

By Andrea Gerlin

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER A panel of the National Academy of Sciences, in a highly critical report, yesterdaycalled for a major national effort to reduce medical errors by developing a mandatoryreporting system and asking Congress to establish a center to study them.

The 220-page report, written by a 19-member committee of the Academy's Institute of Medicine, set as a goal a 50 percent reduction in the nation's "stunningly high rate of medical errors" within five years. It estimated that errors from medical treatment kill upto 98,000 people in U.S. hospitals every year and characterized the problem as amongthe nation's leading causes of death and injury.

Several members of the committee said in interviews yesterday that the report wasintended as a loud call to action for the health-care industry, which it said has not actedswiftly enough to address the causes of errors.

"What it says is 'enough already,' " said Lucian Leape, a committee member andadjunct professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health. "It's a matter of holding people's feet to the fire and stop talking about errors and start doingsomething."



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Medical mistakes often unreported

About 3,500 patients die — and no one has to know

By Sarah A. Webster / The Detroit News

Twenty states require hospitals to report serious mistakes, but Michigan isn’t amongthem.

As a result, it’s impossible to say exactly how manypeople are maimed or killed by hospital foul-ups. Butbased on a recent report by the Institute of Medicine,which estimates 36 error-related hospital deaths per

100,000 people, 3,534 Michiganians died last year dueto medical mistakes.

Patients reported 2,027 complaints about health careorganizations to the state, but Tom Lindsay, director of the Michigan Bureau of Health Services, said thoselikely represent just a fraction of the mistakes.

“I can’t tell you how many deaths or injuries result frommedical mistakes,” Lindsay said.

Several institute members said mandatory reporting of serious mistakes is the first step to reducing the errors.It is asking Congress to establish a nationwidemandatory reporting system for medical errors thatcause injury or death.

Morris Richardson II/ The Detroit News

Colleen Chapman of Dearborn

as overcome with emotion in

a Wayne County court in

December. She is suing a local

hospital to learn what diseases

she may have been exposed to

because of a mistake in

sterilizing an instrument used

on her during surgery.

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MEDICAL MISTAKES

During 1999 mainstream institutions revealed that one of thebiggest killers in the U.S. is medical mistakes.



** The NEW YORK TIMES reported that 5% of people admitted tohospitals, or about 1.8 million people per year, in the U.S. pick

up an infection while there.[1] Such infections are called"iatrogenic" -- meaning "induced by a physician," or, more

loosely, "caused by medical care." Iatrogenic infections are

directly responsible for 20,000 deaths among hospital patients inthe U.S. each year, and they contribute to an additional 70,000deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control(CDC). The dollar cost of iatrogenic infections is $4.5 billion,

according to the CDC.

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Washington Post

High-Tech Cure for MedicalMistakes

By Newt Gingrich

Wednesday, August 2, 2000; Page A31

Imagine that we had an airline crash every day, taking the lives of more than 250 Americans. The country would be outraged, the president would be demanding action,and Congress would be passing emergency legislation. And yet a tragedy of similar proportions is occurring right now in American hospitals.

As many as 98,000 people are needlessly dying in our hospitals every year because of inappropriate medical treatment, according to the report "To Err Is Human" by theInstitute of Medicine (IOM). The number of people who die every day in hospitalsbecause of inappropriate medicine is double the number who died in last week'sConcorde crash.

The time has come for Congress and the president to act on behalf of all Americans. Itis time to stop defending inefficiency and to drag health care into the 21st century byinsisting on modern management and information systems.

According to IOM's initial report, inappropriate medical treatment is the fifth leading

cause of death in the United States. And that number does not include deaths resultingfrom home care, ambulatory care or outpatient visits, those that occur in nursing homesor those at patients' homes after they have received inappropriate care in the hospital.

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Medical Mistakes Affect Many

Poll Finds Widespread Error

By Claudine Chamberlain

Oct. 9 — Beyond the nightmarish tales of doctors amputating the wrong leg, or leaving somesurgical tool inside a patient, there lies a pervasive and real concern among patients that doctodon't always do the right thing.

A new poll from the nonprofit National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) finds that 42 percent osay they've been affected by physician errors, either directly or through a friend or relative. If thof roughly 1,500 people accurately represents the general public, it could mean that more than

million Americans have experience with medical mistakes.More alarming, according to the survey, is the fact that in one out of three cases the error permharmed the patient's health.The problem, said Dr. Lucian Leape of the Harvard School of Public Health, is not incompetencdoctors are 1 percent of the problem at most," he said at a press conference Thursday. "The re

just good people who make mistakes."

Wrong Diagnosis, Treatment Leape is a board member of the NPSF, which was founded by the American Medical AssociatioJune of this year to improve health care safety. AMA leaders say it's time to bring the issue out open, rather than living in constant fear that any admission of error will launch a flood of malpra

lawsuits.Leape's own research has shown that the tally of medical mistakes made each year could reacmillion, with total costs as high as $200 billion.The survey found that 40 percent of the people who had experienced a medical mistake pointedmisdiagnoses and wrong treatments as the problem. Medication errors accounted for 28 percenmistakes. And 22 percent of respondents reported slip-ups during medical procedures.Half of the errors occurred in hospitals, and 22 percent in doctors' offices.

What Causes Errors When asked what may have caused their doctors to make such errors, patients cited carelessnstress, faulty training and bad communication. Three out of four believe the best solution to the

would be to bar health care workers with bad track records.But Leape disagreed, arguing that punishment simply encourages people to cover up their erroneed to shift emphasis away from individuals," he said. "Errors are not the disease, they're thesymptoms of the disease."Instead, he said, poorly designed health care systems may be largely to blame. Doctors and nuoften work double shifts, making them more prone to error. And in this age of computer technolLeape noted, the hand-written drug prescription should be a relic of the past.In fact, prescription errors may be among the easiest to avoid. Within five years, most hospitals



and pharmacies should be using computerized drug tracking programs that allow a doctor or pharmacist to know exactly what drug is being called for. Bad penmanship should not be a risk for patients.

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Medical mistakes: A legal and ethical dilemma for doctors and patients

May 1, 2000Web posted at: 8:41 a.m. EDT (1241 GMT)

By CNN & Time Producer Ken Shiffman

Ask John Hawley about medical mistakes, and he'll tell

you how he lost half a lung to a misdiagnosis of cancer. Ask his wife, and she'll tell you about the fear that shefelt through the ordeal. They'll both tell you they werestunned that his doctors never told them about themistake.

Experts say medical mistakes occur all the time, and doctors often fail to tell patientsabout them. A recent report estimates that up to 98,000 patients a year die from medicalerrors.

Hawley, a retiree from the U.S. Navy, went into surgery in late January 1998 at

Lawnwood Regional Medical Center in Fort Pierce, Florida. Half of one lung was cutout, and tissue was sent to the pathology lab for a follow-up analysis.

For the year following the surgery, the Hawleys say they lived in fear, worrying thatJohn's cancer might reoccur. The Hawleys say they were astonished to find out thatallegedly the doctors had known, but had not told them, that the post-surgery pathologylab analysis had revealed that Hawley apparently had been misdiagnosed with cancer.

"I was tickled to death for about 30 seconds," says Hawley, "then I got really mad,figured that I went through all of this pain and been drug through everything, and backfor appointments to see the people who done it, and they never mentioned a word to

me. And I was pretty mad."

Hawley is suing Lawnwood hospital and some of its doctors. All the defendants declinedto comment, citing the lawsuit.

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John Hawley had surgery inlate January of 1998



Deaths in England Due to Medical Errors up500%

By Sarah Lyall

About 1,200 people died in public hospitals in Britain last year because of mistakes inprescribing and administering medicine, according to a report published by agovernment watchdog group.

Outlined in a report by the Audit Commission, the errors included administering thewrong medicine - in one case, a breast cancer patient was given the sleeping drugTemazepam instead of the cancer drug Tamoxifen - to giving out the wrong dosage of the right drug, to unknowingly prescribing a drug that caused a fatal reaction.

The death toll was five times higher than that in 1990, according to the report.

In addition, the thousands of patients who survive medicine-related mistakes each year invariably become sicker, requiring more treatment that create an extra expense for theNational Health Service, the report said.

"The health service is probably spending $725 million a year making better people whoexperienced an adverse incident or errors, and that does not include the human cost topatients," said Nick Mapstone, an author of the report.

Mr. Mapstone said that many of the most common errors are avoidable and could berectified if the health service introduced computerized patient record and prescription

systems.

As it is now, patients' notes are often illegible, incomplete or missing altogether, thereport said, making it impossible for doctors and nurses to have accurate information.

The government has promised to introduce computerized prescriptions - which couldinclude a standard national system for coding medicines and the use of bar codes tosupport development of electronic prescribing systems - by 2005, but Mr. Mapstonesaid he did not think it would meet the deadline.

Addressing the issues raised by the report, Dr. Trevor Pickersgill, a spokesman for the

junior doctors' committee of the British Medical Association, said that understaffing inhospitals and the increasing complexity of modern drug therapy have created a culture"where mistakes unfortunately do happen."

"The number of drugs is increasing, the effectiveness - and therefore often the toxicity -of drugs is increasing, the number of people on multiple medications is increasing, andthat increases the risk of interaction," Dr. Pickersgill told the BBC.



"We must also remember that one in six pharmacy posts in hospitals are unfilled, andnew doctors who are doing the work on the wards are overworked as well," he said.

A number of highly publicized cases of drug-related error in recent months has broughthome the problem. In one case, a cancer patient was prescribed and administered a

drug at 1,000 times the recommended dose, according to the report.

In another case, at Queen's Medical Center in Nottingham, a teenager, who was acancer patient in remission, fell into a coma and died after an anticancer drug wasmistakenly injected into his spine.

"The recent events at Queen's Medical Center illustrate how day-today pressures canlead to acknowledged best practice being ignored," the report said.

Jackie Glatter, a spokeswoman for the Consumers' Association, which lobbies for patients' rights, said: "The report shows there is a strong need for detailed and clear

patient information about treatments and medicines - not just in hospitals, but also whenpeople are taking medicine at home."

New York Times December 20, 2001

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Medical errors kill tens of thousands annua

panel says November 30, 1999

Web posted at: 12:20 a.m. EST (0520 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- More people die each year in the UnitedStates from medical errors than from highway accidents, breastcancer or AIDS, a federal advisory panel reported Monday.

The report from the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine cited studies showing between 44,000 and 98,000 peopledie each year because of mistakes by medical professionals.

"That's probably an underestimate for two reasons," noted Dr.Donald Berwick of the Institute of Medicine.

"One is, there are many different kinds of errors we never learn about -- even in retrospective- because they are never written down. And second, these studies did not include other areas

Anesthesiologists made their fiegetting manufacturers to standaequipment

http://www-cgi.cnn.com/cgi-bin/redirect?WEBMD_GENERIC

http://www-cgi.cnn.com/cgi-bin/redirect?WEBMD_GENERIC



like home care, nursing homes and ambulatory care centers," Berwick said.

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Report: Deaths from medication errors on

increase

(CNN) -- Deaths caused by medication mistakes more thandoubled between 1983 and 1993, according to findingspublished in the British medical journal The Lancet onSaturday.

The study by a research team at the University of Californiaat San Diego found that the sharpest increase in deaths wasamong outpatients.

Deaths from accidental poisoning by drugs and other medicines climbed from 851 to nearly 2,100. Of those, outpatient deaths increased from

under 200 to just under 1,500. By 1993, outpatients were 6.5 times more likely to diefrom medication mistakes than inpatients.

The report was based on death certificates, and it was unclear whether the deaths werecaused by a medical professional's error or patient error.

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Study: Drug reactions kill an estimated

100,000 a year CHICAGO (CNN) -- Adverse reactions to prescription and over-the-counter medicineskill more than 100,000 Americans and seriously injure an additional 2.1 million eachyear, researchers say.

Such reactions -- which do not include prescribing errors or drug abuse -- rank at leastsixth among causes of death in the United States, behind heart disease, cancer, lung



disease, strokes and accidents, according to a report published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association. The report was based on an analysis of existingstudies.

"Serious adverse drug reactions are frequent ... more so than generally recognized," the

researchers said.

Researchers at the University of Toronto examined 39 studies and estimated that anaverage of 106,000 deaths at U.S. hospitals in 1994 were due to bad reactions to drugs.

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Medical Mistakes Triple All Gun Deaths

Nov. 30 update -- For years, the American Medical Association,

hospitals, medical magazines and various other health care groupshave been beating the drums for more gun laws.

And some of us have pointed out their chutzpah, since -- accordingto the official figures, the National Center for Health Statistics, more thantwice as many are killed every year in medical accidents than in gunaccidents.

Some experts have long said the real numbers of what areeuphemistically called "Medical Misadventures" are many timeshigher than officially acknowledged.

Yesterday, an independent report from the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, said thenumber of deaths from medical mistakes every year may total 98,000-- about three times the number of deaths due to accidents, homicidesand suicides with firearms.

The study says medical mistakes may cost the nation as much as$29 billion a year and may be the fifth highest cause of death --behind heart disease, cancer, stroke and lung obstructive lungdiseases.

That 98,000 total is over twice as many as die in autocrashes each year.

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Nursing mistakes kill, injure thousands





Britain's death rate is comparable to that in America, where recommendations in areport produced by the Kellogg Foundation three weeks ago are likely to result in thecreation of a new federal agency to protect patients from medical error

The report drew on studies that examined the records of 30,195 patients and found a

3.7% error rate. Of those injured, 14% died. Researchers concluded that 70% of theerrors - and 155,000 deaths - were avoidable.

Department of Health officials are now examining a proposal for a £1.2m three-year national study of 20 hospitals and 10,000 medical records to establish exactly howthese avoidable deaths occur and how to prevent them.

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Drugs and Medical Errors Killing 1 of Every 5

AustraliansIn a recent emailed response to the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Ron Law, ExecutiveDirector of the NNFA, in New Zealand and member of the New Zealand Ministry of Health Working Group advising on medical error, offered some enlightening informationon deaths caused by drugs and medical errors.

He notes the prevalence of deaths from medical errors and also from properlyresearched and prescribed medications in Australia and New Zealand, which serves asa reminder to us that the US is not alone in having this problem.

He cites the following statistics and facts:

Official Australian government reports reveal that preventablemedical error in hospitals is responsible for 11% of all deaths in Australia.(1, 2),which is about 1 of every 9 deaths.

If deaths from properly researched, properly registered, properly prescribed andproperly used drugs were added along with preventable deaths due to privatepractice it comes to a staggering 19%, which is almost 1 of every 5 deaths.

New Zealand figures are very similar.

According to Mr. Law:

Put another way, the equivalent of New Zealand's second largest city (Christchurch) hasbeen killed by preventable medical error and deaths from properly researched, properlyregistered, properly prescribed and properly used drugs in Australasia in the pastdecade and its biggest city Auckland either killed or permanently maimed.



Put another way, more than 5 milion people have been killed by Western medicalpractice in the past decade (Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, and NZ) and 20 millionkilled or permanently maimed. Sounds like a war zone, doesn't it?

Put another way, the economic impact of deaths due to preventable medical error anddeaths from properly researched, properly registered, properly prescribed and properly

used drugs is approximately $1 trillion over the past decade.

He notes that only 0.3% of these deaths are properly coded and classified in officialstatistics as being attributed to these causes.

British Medical Journal November 11, 2000; 321: 1178A (emailed response)

References:

1. Iatrogenic Injury in Australia - This is the executive summary of a 150 page official reportrevealing 14,000 preventable medical error deaths (only in hospitals - not private practice).(Full report on file).

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Study: Tools left in 1,500 patients yearly

By Jeff Donn

The Associated Press

BOSTON — Surgical teams accidentally leave clamps, sponges and other tools insideabout 1,500 patients nationwide each year, according to the biggest study of theproblem yet.

The mistakes largely result not from surgeon fatigue, but from the stress arising fromemergencies or complications discovered on the operating table, the researchersreported.

It also happens more often to fat patients because there is more room inside them tolose equipment, according to the study.

Both the researchers and several other experts agreed that the number of suchmistakes is small compared with the roughly 28 million operations a year in the UnitedStates. "But no one in any role would say it's acceptable," said Dr. Donald Berwick,president of the Boston-based nonprofit Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

The study was done by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and HarvardSchool of Public Health, both in Boston. It was published in today's New EnglandJournal of Medicine.

http://www.health.wa.gov.au/warm/Symposium/abstracts/runciman.htm






The researchers checked insurance records from about 800,000 operations inMassachusetts for 16 years ending in 2001. They counted 61 forgotten pieces of surgical equipment in 54 patients. From that, they calculated a national estimate of 1,500 cases yearly. A total of $3 million was paid out in the Massachusetts cases,mostly in settlements.

Two-thirds of the mistakes happened even though the equipment was counted beforeand after the procedure, in keeping with the standard practice.

Most lost objects were sponges, but also included were metal clamps and electrodes. Intwo cases, 11-inch retractors — metal strips used to hold back tissue — were forgotteninside patients.

The lost objects often caused tears, obstructions or infections. One patient died of complications, but the researchers withheld details for reasons of privacy.

Most patients needed additional surgery to remove the object.

The study found that emergency operations are nine times more likely to lead to suchmistakes, and that operating-room complications requiring a change in procedure arefour times more likely. A rise of one point in the patient's body-mass index, a measure of weight relative to height, raises the chances of such a mistake by 10 percent.

The length of the operation or the hour of day does not appear to make a difference,suggesting that fatigue does not cause such mistakes.

"It tends to be in unpredictable situations," said lead author, Dr. Atul Gawande of

Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Dr. Sidney Wolfe, health-research director of the public-interest lobby group PublicCitizen, said the real number of lost instruments may be even higher, because hospitalsare not required to report such mistakes to public agencies.

However, others said such mistakes are so rare — occurring about 50 times in 1 millionoperations — that figuring out how to prevent them could be difficult.

"I find it's going to be difficult to make much more improvement, because some of therisk factors are things that are hard to control," said Lori Bartholomew, research director

at the Physician Insurers Association of America, which represents medical-malpracticeinsurers.

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Drugs and Doctors May be the Leading Causeof Death in U.S.



By Joseph Mercola, D.O.

This finding is more of a speculation though, so below I have provided some other studies to support this assertion.

In 1994, an estimated 2,216,000 (1,721,000 to 2,711,000) hospitalizedpatients had serious adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and 106,000 (76,000to 137,000) had fatal ADRs, making these reactions between the fourthand sixth leading cause of death.

Fatal ADRs accounted for 0.32 percent (95 percent confidence interval(CI), 0.23 percent to 0.41 percent) of hospitalized patients.

JAMA April 15, 1998;279(15):1200-5

Serious and Fatal Drug Reactions in US Hospitals

Drug-related morbidity and mortality have been estimated to cost morethat $136 billion a year in United States. These estimates are higher thanthe total cost of cardiovascular care or diabetes care in the United States.

A major component of these costs is adverse drug reactions (ADE).

Healthsentinel.com

The numbers of deaths reported in data sets varied 34-fold and were up toseveral 100-fold less than values based on extrapolations of surveillanceprograms.

Am J Med August 1 2000;109(2):122-30

About 0.05 percent of all hospital admissions were certainly or probablydrug-related.

Incidence figures based on death certificates only may seriouslyunderestimate the true incidence of fatal adverse drug reactions.

Eur J Clin Pharmacol October 2002;58(7):479-82

In one study of 200 patients, ADRs may have contributed to the deaths of two (one percent) patients.

J Clin Pharm Ther October 2000;25(5):355-61

In a survey of over 28,000 patients, ADRs were considered to be thecause of 3.4 percent of hospital admissions. Of these, 187 ADRs werecoded as severe. Gastrointestinal complaints (19 percent) represented the

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most common events, followed by metabolic and hemorrhagiccomplications (nine percent). The drugs most frequently responsible for these ADRs were diuretics, calcium channel blockers, nonsteroidalantiinflammatory drugs and digoxin.

J Am Geriatr Soc Dec 2002;50(12):1962-8

Comments by Dr. Mercola

As health reporter Nick Regush said last year

"There is no way to be nice about this. There is no point in raising false hopes.There is no treatment or vaccine in sight. There is no miracle breakthrough on thehorizon.

Medicine, as we know it, is dying. It's entering a terminal phase.

What began as an acute illness reached the chronic stage about a decade ago andprogression toward death has been remarkably swift and well beyond anything onecould have predicted.

The disease is caused by conflict of interest, tainted research, greed for big bucks,pretentious doctors and scientists, lying, cheating, invasion by the morally bankruptmarketing automatons of the drug industry, derelict politicians and federal and stateregulators - all seasoned with huge doses of self-importance and foul odor."

Currently, the United States spends about 1.5 trillion dollars for healthcare, and the

projections are that it will double in less than 10 years.

The sad tragedy is that we are spending all of this money on disease managementfocused on drugs and surgery, and our return on this investment is profoundly poor.More and more people do not have the energy they need to get through the day whilemillions of others are suffering with painful crippling diseases because they haveviolated basic health principles.

Often, negative health and lifestyle choices are made because of a lack of knowledge,and it's my passion to increase the public's awareness of the health tragedies facing thenation. I will give you, the consumer, the tools to become a major force for good health

and to alleviate disease and suffering.

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Dr. Grisanti's Comments:

There are literally thousands of news articles informing the public to be careful!! It isabout time we take a stand on protecting our lives. The days of simply masking the



http://www.mercola.com/2002/feb/27/death_of_medicine.htm



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symptoms has become a dangerous business. I believe the public must be informedand educated on alternatives to conventional medical treatment. I am very disappointedwith the state of our country's health affairs.. If it is up the pharmaceutical industry toeducate us, then the public will have a LONG wait. I am confident the people of our country will NEVER be offered time tested alternatives to drug therapy. Ultimately, your

health rests in your hands.. My mission is to offer each and every one of my subscribersthe most up-to-date alternative medical solutions. information I promise you won't seeadvertised on TV or your popular magazines..

References

1. Schuster M, McGlynn E, Brook R. How good is the quality of health care in the United States?Milbank Q. 1998; 76:517-563.

2. Kohn L, ed., Corrigan J, ed., Donaldson M, ed. To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System.Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1999.

3. Starfield B. Primary Care: Balancing Health Needs, Services, and Technology. New York, NY:Oxford University Press, 1998.

4. World Health Report 2000. Available athttp://www.who.int/whr2001/2001/archives/2000/en/index.htm . Accessed June 28, 2000.

5. Kunst A. Cross-National Comparisons of Socioeconomic Differences in Mortality. Rotterdam, theNetherlands: Erasmus University; 1997.

6. Law M, Wald N. Why heart disease mortality is low in France: The time lag explanation. BMJ.1999; 313:1471-1480.

7. Starfield B. Evaluating the State Children's Health Insurance Program: critical considerations. Annual Rev. Public Health. 2000; 21:569-585.

8. Leape L. Unnecessary surgery. Annual Rev. Public Health. 1992; 13:363-383. 9. Phillips D, Christenfeld N, Glynn L. Increase in U.S. medication-error deaths between 1983 and

1993. Lancet, 1998; 351:643-644. 10. Lazarou J, Pomeranz B, Corey P. Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients.

JAMA. 1998; 279:1200-1205. 11. Weingart SN, Wilson RM, Gibberd RW, Harrison B. Epidemiology and medical error. BMJ. 2000;

320:774-777. 12. Wilkinson R. Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality. London, England: Routledge;

1996. 13. Evans R, Roos N. What is right about the Canadian health system? Milbank Q. 1999; 77:393-

399. 14. Guyer B, Hoyert D, Martin J, Ventura S, MacDorman M, Strobino D. Annual summary of vital

statistics, 1998. Pediatrics. 1999; 104:1229-1246. 15. Harrold LR, Field TS, Gurwitz JH. Knowledge, patterns of care, and outcomes of care for

generalists and specialists. J Gen Intern Med. 1999; 14:499-511. 16. Donahoe MT. Comparing generalist and specialty care: discrepancies, deficiencies, and

excesses. Arch Intern Med. 1998; 158:1596-1607. 17. Anderson G, Poullier J-P. Health Spending, Access, and Outcomes: Trends in Industrialized

Countries. New York, NY: The Commonwealth Fund; 1999. 18. Mold J, Stein H. The cascade effect in the clinical care of patients. N Engl J Med. 1986; 314:512-

514. 19. Shi L, Starfield B. Income inequality, primary care, and health indicators. J Fam Pract.1999;

48:275-284.

http://www.who.int/whr2001/2001/archives/2000/en/index.htm





For reprints of the original JAMA article, contact: Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH Department of Health Policy and Management Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health 624 N Broadway, Room 452 Baltimore, MD 21205-1996 Email: [email protected]

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© 2001 Ronald J. Grisanti D.C., D.A.B.C.ONOTICE: This information is provided for educational purposes. Any medical procedures, dietary changes, or nutritional supplements dis

only be undertaken on the advice of a qualified physician. Ronald J. Grisanti, D.C., D.A.B.C.O

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