Official statistics on cause of death may underestimate the toll from cancer,
says Elizabeth Burton of the Medical Center of Louisiana in New Orleans. Burton
examined the records of patients in a single hospital whose autopsies showed
that they had died of cancer. She found 44 per cent had either not previously
been diagnosed as suffering from cancer, or the type of cancer had been
misdiagnosed (The Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 280,
p 1245).
Many mistakes may never be spotted. In the 1960s, around half of patients
dying in US hospitals were subjected to an autopsy. Today, the figure is just 10
per cent.
