# Medical errors #3 cause of US deaths **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 4, 2016, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medical-errors-3-cause-of-us-deaths/753874 "2016-05-04T11:15:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medical-errors-3-cause-of-us-deaths/753874/21 "2016-05-05T21:04:41Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > It is worth reading the responses It’s kind of cool that they do that. None of the journals I typically publish in have a response feature like that. Maybe it’s a medical journal thing? ---
**Author:** ![brujaja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4af34b/32.png) [@brujaja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brujaja)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2016, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medical-errors-3-cause-of-us-deaths/753874/22 "2016-05-06T05:19:27Z")
I know two young(ish) people who died of pneumonia in the last six months. One was a woman who went to emergency. They put her into a medically-induced coma, and she didn’t pull through. The other was a guy who went to emergency. He was part of our circle of friends for many, many years. He was homeless, and probably looked pretty scruffy. They sent him home \* with a prescription for cough syrup, and he died a couple days later. Not sure how to feel about the first one (except sad. she was a lovely person) but I do not feel cool at all about the second one. Yes, I know, technically you can’t send a homeless man home, but you know what I mean. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2016, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medical-errors-3-cause-of-us-deaths/753874/23 "2016-05-06T05:52:10Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > I don’t know if it is a misquote or not. One of the reasons I would critique the article as overly alarmist is that its (apparently) overly-expansive definition of what constitutes “error” does, indeed, make the conclusions in the article (medical error third leading cause of death!!) totally meaningless. Their definition of “cause of death” also seems overly broad. Their definition is “if there was a mistake at any point and the patient died, it’s error as cause of death”. I disagree. My father had pleural mesothelioma. He got misdiagnosed as “lung cancer, primary” because hey, at that point if you found a lung tumor in a smoker you didn’t search further. Eventually the doctors realized the source was actually the pleural sac and this led to a change in local cancer diagnosis protocols. Thing is, while that change was necessary and a better diagnosis would have led to better quality of life, he still would have died. His final trigger may have been that aortic aneurism of which he couldn’t be operated (too weak) or it may have been a morphine overdose, but writing “morphine overdose” in the death certificate rather than the underlying cause of “cancer” would have been misleading - and so would it have been if it was listed as “medical error”. He died of cancer, and while a better diagnosis would have modified the outcome it would not have avoided the death. My friend who died of Reyes’ syndrome after being given aspirin for post-partum headaches? Yeah, that is a case of medical error as cause of death. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2016, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medical-errors-3-cause-of-us-deaths/753874/24 "2016-05-07T03:20:31Z")
The rankings of leading causes of death are close to meaningless. #3 is medical error. [#3 is Ischemic heart disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate). [#3 is chronic lower respiratory disease](http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282929.php). [#3 is COPD](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/)… ---
**Author:** ![brujaja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4af34b/32.png) [@brujaja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brujaja)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2016, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medical-errors-3-cause-of-us-deaths/753874/25 "2016-05-07T03:46:42Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > My friend who died of Reyes’ syndrome after being given aspirin for post-partum headaches? Yeah, that is a case of medical error as cause of death. Wow, that is terrible, and so sad! I thought Reyes’ syndrome only happened to children? (Also, it seems like hospitals around here use Tylenol exclusively.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medical-errors-3-cause-of-us-deaths/753874.md?page=1)