A misdiagnosis can cost one a life. Read on...

Have you ever been victimised due to misdiagnosis? Do you know how bad can be the impact?

Life is smooth sailing until you come across unexpected bumps on the journey. Unexpected is an understatement when you are being advised a medical treatment that is never required for a disease that you are not suffering from. As the author of this article, I had this episode twice with me personally, once when I was wrongly advised of a knee replacement in the year 2017 and second when my father was misdiagnosed with Liver cirrhosis in 2014.

Thinking of these two major events made me realise that if I had gone ahead with the initial advice, what would have been the outcome or I would say an outcome that would be devastating. Most people will experience at least one diagnostic error in their lifetime, sometimes with devastating consequences

Fortunately, I had the people and resources around me to access so I could take the decision of obtaining the second opinion otherwise situation would have been worst for me and my family.

There are some enlightening facts about the rate of misdiagnosis:

• There are over 2,50,000 deaths annually because of misdiagnosis every year in the US alone.
• There are over 12 million people who experience some kind of diagnostic errors in US
• According to WHO, there are over 138 million patients harmed every year due to misdiagnosis with over 2.6 million deaths.

Everybody understands Misdiagnosis but not many understand that a second opinion service can address this problem efficiently by bringing a team of doctors to review to provide an unbiased second opinion. A second opinion leads to a better decision making and reconfirms the diagnosis and the line of treatment.

As I always advice, does not matter where do you live and how good is your treating doctor? God forbidden if you are diagnosed with some life threatening disease, never hesitate to seek a second opinion. It does not cost you much but helps you with the peace of mind to carry on with your treatment.