Is Your Doctor Killing You?

Doctors Are The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Causing 225,000 Deaths Every Year

This article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) documents the tragedy of the traditional medical paradigm.

This information is a followup of the Institute of Medicine report which hit the papers in December of last year.

The author is Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and she desribes how the US health care system contributes to poor health.

ALL THESE ARE DEATHS PER YEAR:

12,000 -- unnecessary surgery
7,000 -- medication errors in hospitals
20,000 -- other errors in hospitals
80,000 -- infections in hospitals
106,000 -- non-error, negative effects of drugs

These total to 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes.

Iatrogenic - is defined as induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially of a complication of treatment.

Dr. Starfield offers several warnings in interpreting these numbers:

First, most of the data are derived from studies in hospitalized patients. Second, these estimates are for deaths only and do not include negative effects that are associated with disability or discomfort. Thirdly, the estimates of death due to error are lower than those in the IOM report.

If the higher estimates are used, the deaths due to iatrogenic causes would range from 230,000 to 284,000. In any case, 225,000 deaths per year constitutes the third leading cause of death in the United States, after deaths from heart disease and cancer. Even if these figures are overestimated, there is a wide margin between these numbers of deaths and the next leading cause of death (cerebrovascular disease).