Hospital Admissions Due to Doctor Caused Diseases Still High
From the Archives of Internal Medicine January 11th
1999, comes the headline, "Despite high-tech medicine, diseases from medical
treatment still significant cause of Intensive Care Unit admissions." Doctor
caused diseases are referred to "iatrogenic" diseases, and according to the
article are a major cause of ICU admissions. Surprisingly, the problem has not changed
since 1980. This suggests that even with alleged advances in medical technology the
results for the patient were just as risky.
In another study in 1994, French researchers reviewed 623 patients
admitted to ICU. Of those 10.9% were determined to be iatrogenic disease admissions. A
majority of those were drug related and next in incidence were medical acts. Of these 13
died and the costs for all were $688,470.00 in the studied cases. This study concluded
that 51% of these were preventable.
Groups outside medicine have claimed that the numbers are much higher
than medically reported and that the costs of iatrogenic diseases overall run into the
hundreds of billions. |