• Intern Emerg Med · Apr 2022

    Overdiagnosis in the emergency department: a sharper focus.

    • Marisa Vigna, Carina Vigna, and Eddy S Lang.
    • Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
    • Intern Emerg Med. 2022 Apr 1; 17 (3): 629-633.

    AbstractOverdiagnosis occurs when a person's symptoms or life experiences are given a diagnostic label that ultimately causes them more harm than good. We describe the complex drivers of overdiagnosis spanning five interconnected domains, which can lead to numerous negative impacts on patients. Emergency physicians are often tasked with making timely clinical assessments, decisions, and diagnoses that can unintentionally result in overdiagnosis. Three pertinent areas related to overdiagnosis in Emergency Medicine: anaphylaxis, subsegmental pulmonary embolism, and low-risk chest pain are discussed. For a broader perspective, insight on overdiagnosis from medical students and a patient advisor are presented. The perspectives illustrated are meant to spark reflection on: the ethics of labeling a person with a diagnosis, current clinical practices, the limitations of medical education, and patient care and communication in the context of overdiagnosis in the Emergency Department.© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Medicina Interna (SIMI).

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…