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A study published in the BMJ found that medical errors may be the third leading cause of death in the United States:
The IOM, based on one study, estimated deaths because of medical errors as high as 98,000 a year. Makary's research involves a more comprehensive analysis of four large studies, including ones by the Health and Human Services Department's Office of the Inspector General and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that took place between 2000 to 2008. His calculation of 251,000 deaths equates to nearly 700 deaths a day — about 9.5 percent of all deaths annually in the United States.
And from the airplane analogy, a simple fix: checklists.
Is it time for a system theory approach to medicine?
Medical error—the third leading cause of death in the US (DOI: 10.1136/bmj.i2139)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by CirclesInSand on Saturday May 14 2016, @11:25AM
Depending on how you choose to segregate causes of death, you can make almost anything the n-th leading cause of death.
One could say the #1 leading cause of death is the failure of oxygen to reach cells. One could say old age is a leading cause of death, or separate all the problems of old age into separate categories and list them individually as uncommon causes of death.
It would be meaningful to say "cause of death X is more common than cause of death Y" or "cause of death X affects p% of the population", but "cause of death X is the n-th leading cause of death" isn't even a meaningful statement.
(Score: 3, Funny) by khchung on Saturday May 14 2016, @02:06PM
No, the #1 leading cause of death is being alive in the first place.
What is dead may never die. :)
(Score: 3, Funny) by hendrikboom on Saturday May 14 2016, @03:17PM
That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange eons even death may die.
(Score: 2) by Anne Nonymous on Saturday May 14 2016, @04:53PM
Just don't eat any bread and you'll be ok.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 14 2016, @03:28PM
> Depending on how you choose to segregate causes of death, you can make almost anything the n-th leading cause of death.
Its always best to read what people said before criticizing them for what they said,
From the paper: [sci-hub.cc]
Medical error has been defined as an unintended act (either of
omission or commission) or one that does not achieve its
intended outcome, the failure of a planned action to be
completed as intended (an error of execution), the use of a wrong
plan to achieve an aim (an error of planning), or a deviation
from the process of care that may or may not cause harm to the
patient.
(Score: 2) by CirclesInSand on Saturday May 14 2016, @03:42PM
How you define medical error is irrelevant to the point. The problem is that everything else can be partitioned arbitrarily to invent the statistic.
Another funny thing is that medical error being an increasing cause of death by % isn't necessarily a bad thing. It could just mean that treatment is really effective, and you only die if someone screws up.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Saturday May 14 2016, @09:08PM
Depending on how you choose to segregate causes of death, you can make almost anything the n-th leading cause of death.
Read the article. It's a standard segregation of causes of death by the US government. Anything that becomes the third cause of death has to kill on average at least 147k people in the US per year to achieve that (to beat out respiratory diseases which are traditionally in third place). And death due to medical error is a significant distinguishing factor unlike cell death. So we have a significant number of deaths per year coupled with a significant distinction, that means there is meaning here.