Diagnostic improvement initiatives should focus on dangerous conditions with higher diagnostic error and misdiagnosis-related harm rates.

Prior research based on Candello data found that fifteen conditions related to vascular events, infections, and cancers (the ‘Big Three’) account for approximately half of all serious misdiagnosis-related harms. Continuing to explore that line of study, researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-authors performed a focused literature review of 28 studies representing over 91,000 patients to measure diagnostic error and harm rates for the 15 conditions identified in the 'Big Three' study. 

Read the full-text study published in the peer-review journal, Diagnosis.

Rate of diagnostic errors and serious misdiagnosis-related harms for major vascular events, infections, and cancers: toward a national incidence estimate using the “Big Three”

Newman-Toker DE, Wang Z, Zhu Y, Nassery N, Saber Tehrani AS, Schaffer AC, Yu-Moe CW, Clemens GD, Fanai M, Siegal D. Rate of diagnostic errors and serious misdiagnosis-related harms for major vascular events, infections, and cancers: toward a national incidence estimate using the "Big Three". Diagnosis  (Berl). 2020 May 14:/j/dx.ahead-of-print/dx-2019-0104/dx-2019-0104.xml. doi: 10.1515/dx-2019-0104. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 32412440.