The most important thing that all patients and their loved ones are concerned about is having the right diagnosis and followig the best possible course of treatment. Being sure about having the right treatment brings the serenity to all. The best way of finding out the correct course of treatment is comparison and contrast of various doctors` opinions.
In spite of doctors effort and care to get the best evaluations for the welfare of their patients, unfortunately, unacceptable mistakes may occur. Most of the time main reason of this type of mistakes may caused by the lack of time and or information.
Since medical errors are reality, getting various medical opinions from different specialists is vital.
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A study published in the October American Journal of Roentgenology, the authors concluded that patient care is improved by subspecialty second reads; accuracy increased by 90% when second interpretations were compared to originals.
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The radiology interpretation error rate is as high as 33% for abnormal studies.
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Second readings in radiology typically disclose discordance rates in the range of 2% to 20% for most general radiology imaging formats, although higher rates have been found in some studies.
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It is estimated that 10% to 30% of breast cancers are missed on mammography. A recent study of breast cancer found that the diagnosis was inappropriately delayed in 9%, and a third of these reflected misreading of the mammogram. In addition to missing cancer known to be present, mammographers can be overly aggressive in reading studies, frequently recommending biopsies for what turns out to be benign lesions.
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A Wisconsin team found that the rate of disagreement between interpretations of pediatric imaging studies by generalist community radiologists and specialty radiologists at tertiary care pediatric hospitals can be as high as 42%.
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Tens of thousands of patients are misdiagnosed every year, according to the Institute of Medicine
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Medical mistakes are the eight leading cause of death, higher than car accidents or breast cancer
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According to the Commonwealth Fund, one in five Americans report that they or a family member have experienced a medical error of some kind. Nationally, this translates into an estimated 22.8 million people with at least one family member who experienced a mistake in a doctor’s office or hospital.
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45% of the adverse events could have been prevented with appropriate attention (Department of Health and Human Services report, 2008)