Doctors are less likely to make mistakes when determining the cause of death

This was confirmed by the findings of pathologists.

In less than four out of a hundred cases, doctors are wrong in determining the cause of death. This conclusion was made by researchers from the Central Research Institute of Organization and Informatization of Healthcare, having prepared a report on the state of the pathological and anatomical service in Russia.

Scientists came to this conclusion after analyzing the information received from the regions of Russia. The object of the study, in particular, was the comparison of the final clinical diagnoses and post-mortem pathological and anatomical studies.

The discrepancy between the conclusions of the attending physicians (or physicians who ascertained death) and the conclusions of the pathologists was 3.4%. However, this indicator does not at all indicate that doctors too often made the wrong diagnosis: in most cases, people do not die in hospital beds, and not everyone is observed by specialists before death. After analyzing similar data over the past 11 years, experts concluded that the discrepancy between the final clinical and pathological diagnoses has decreased by more than two-thirds.

In total, 646,000 post-mortem pathological and anatomical autopsies were performed last year. However, the study of the tissues of the dead is far from the only task of pathologists; more often they have to deal with the tissues of living people. We are talking about cases where doctors examine tissue removed during operations or biopsies. In 2022, specialists conducted 7.6 million lifetime pathological and anatomical studies.