Dennis Quaid's Misdiagnosis

Dennis Quaid's movie star status affords his family the best medical care available. But it couldn't shield his children from the dangers encountered by rich and by poor upon entering a hospital.

As everyone knows, the Quaid twins were mistakenly given intravenous doses of the blood thinner, Heparin, 2000 times stronger than prescribed.

Recently, on 60 Minutes, the Quaids offered their diagnosis: the cause of the medical error was unclear labeling of the child vs adult packaging. Others fault hospital staff for not reading the label.

Now the state of California has fined the offending hospital $25,000, causing some to regard the case as closed, but is it?

Not if you take a closer look.

Under our prevalent medical philosophy, it's common to misdiagnose by quickly fixing a symptom (it was the label!) rather than by addressing the fundamental causation for a systemic problem.

Each year, according to government records as many as 98,000 people die as a result of medical errors. (These estimates, based on hospital disclosures, may in fact be two to three times higher, some physicians think.) Consulting multiple practitioners (for more complex ailments) drives the error rate up to 48%. It's not just about package labeling.

As Quaid detailed on 60 Minutes, when the actor entered his children's hospital room, he was shocked to see the thinned blood spurting from every one of the multiple needle puncture holes in the newborns' skin. The integrity of the four-day olds' skin been punctured by vaccinations, intravenous lines, recommended as "medically necessary" interventions, even in the first days of life yet opening the way to both blood outflow and incoming infection.

The newborns infants were prescribed blood thinning IVs because they had been placed on antibiotics due to the staph infection they contracted at the hospital.

Looking at all of this reveals the label and the lack of vigilance as secondary factors. The primary factors are the wide prevalence of infection in hospitals (and the declining efficacy of antibiotics to address them due to decades of over use.)

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the twins were just two of the two million people, who each year contract infections in hospital. Ninety thousand die from these infections annually.

So this is not about one bad apple nurse, package, or hospital.

According to the Harvard School of Public Health, 34% of people suffer a medical, medication, or lab error annually in the U.S. Our health care spending nearly doubles that of other first world countries, an international study found. Yet despite our costly care, the study authors wrote, "The United States often stands out for inefficient care and errors and is an outlier on access/cost barriers."

As overall costs rise, some can't afford the care they need, while those who can risk medical errors and infection. The myth that our medical care and our medical philosophy are the best in the world dies hard. But beware, the fix won't be found by enlarging the type or changing the label color-coding.

Quaid, like many people, still hopes that his doctors will win back his shattered trust by "taking the lead" to address medical errors. But our passive trust in the caring of an economically bound medical system is part of the problem.

Recently, a government and Merck-funded study of a so-called AIDS vaccine was scrapped because instead of conferring immunity, the vaccine increased the likelihood of contracting AIDS.

Like the failed vaccine, our highly interventionist approach to health is double-edged, carrying unintended dangers its' proponents prefer to ignore. The more you look at these dangers, the more health preservation, maintenance, and proactive approaches make sense.

For example, conventional medicine rejects simple ways to build immunity and increase the body's resistance to infection. Nor can it look critically at some of the common treatments that expose people to risk or undermine immune function. Natural products like colloidal silver and antibiotic herbs show great promise and lack harmful side effects. Building immunity through the use of probiotics is a good option.

But don't expect hospitals to lead the way out of the medical maelstrom. It's up to us. (For tips and action opportunities, please sign up for the Better Health Campaign at: www.health-journalist.com)

Comments

[raker]

Nurses make errors giving wrong doses or the wrong drugs, and it's suggested that we must share the blame because we had the bad judgment to get sick in the first place? I reject this completely. Hospitals need fail-safe systems to ensure that careless life-and-death mistakes can't happen. Hospitals need to figure this out. Blaming the victims is appalling.

[CircleofHealth]

Going to the hospital is no guarantee of safety-- far from it. It's walking into a minefield of rampant infection. When people mistakenly assume that the health care system can fix whatever is wrong with them, rather than empowering themselves and doing everything possible to maintain health to avoid entering that zone, then they are making a big mistake.

[coolmaiden]

I'm sorry you feel as if you are attacked. What this study fails to mention is that a huge chunk of hospital-acquired infections are contracted by patients who are severely immunocompromised. That includes those on chemotherapy or steroids, or have AIDS or neutropenia. Not to say us healthcare providers can't do a better job of washing our hands.

[checkyourpremises]

Thank you, Alison for your "second opinion" as to the real cause of the illness from which our health care system is suffering. I would like to know what you think we can do to mimimize the amount of time we spend exposed to its dangers?

[CircleofHealth]

The key thing is to stay out of a hospital and avoid medications as much as possible by taking proactive health care in advance of any problem. By the time you find yourself in the hospital, the likelihood is that you are already in a disease state. By then it's going to be a lot harder to avoid getting on that medical ride and going wherever it takes you.

Healthy people can take measures to maintain health rather than waiting for symptoms to appear. We've been taught to expect rapid, intense interventions that over-ride the body's healing mechanisms. But gentler, lower cost, natural products, herbs, and soft touch mind-body treatments and life style practices can strengthen the immune system and help the body stay healthy more easily.

At the same time, we have to recognize that we live in a society where we are exposed to infectious agents, hormones, metals and chemicals in the environment, in foods and agriculture and in drugs and vaccines-- and now in water. In effect, we are all taking part in one giant experiment called "how much of this can one body take?" No one really knows the answer.

That's why I also recommend advanced integrative diagnostics and therapies that test levels of key bodily parameters in hormones, brain neurotransmitters, inflammatory markers-- and balance levels using natural substances. This is particularly important as a mid-life tune-up.

Finally, addressing repeating life-limiting patterns is vital, because such patterns, which many of us learned growing up will block us from optimizing health and self-actualizing.

I also think that one of the biggest mistakes made in health care is treating it as an individual matter. Our collective decisions create the health care and the environmental exposures we get-- and I encourage people to join with others to help co-create the broad options in health care that are truly beneficial-- as well as societal decision making that truly assesses potential health impacts, Those interested in that can join the Better Health Campaign at www.health-journalist.com

[checkyourpremises]

Thank you Alison, for giving us a your valuable "second opinion" on the deeper causes of the illness from which our health care sysrtem is suffering. Given that time spent in the clutches of that system is risky, and may create more harm than it cures, I would like to know what you think health care consumers can do in the way of prevention -- to reduce doctor and hospital visits, and along with them, exposure to the system''s "bugs."

[dschwarz]

>vaccinations, intravenous lines, all are so-called "medically necessary" interventions, even in the first days of life. Should these potentially risky invasions be a commonplace?

First off, I'd like to know if IVs are "commonplace" interventions for healthy newborns in the hospital. Certainly they were not when my two children were born in 2003 and 2006. They were born at a major teaching hospital in NYC.

Now, about those other needle sticks. Vaccinations? Sure. Bring em on. Better than the alternative any day. Blood tests to discover potentially fatal genetic conditions? Sure.

I'm not apologizing for the hospital's mistake, but it's only prudent for a baby to get certain medical tests and care in the first few days of life, and if that requires a few needle sticks, so be it.

[MLandry]

Blaming the nurse is not the problem, although they do make convenient scapegoats. Quaid was dead wrong blaming the nurse and the pharmacy technician, let him and his wife work a shift in a nurse's shoes then their disdain will be directed to the proper place, which is hospital administrations and regulatory agencies and not dumped on the backs of the care providers.

The piles and piles of compliance requirements necessary to meet accrediting standards, coupled with for-profit hospitals striving to make a buck, along with the feds regulatory insistence on discharging patients before they are well contribute to stripping away the number of front line workers in favor of stockholders and bean counters. If you have stressed out, underpaid employees caring for 5, 6, 7, even 8 patients then mistakes will happen. Remove every hospital system from for-profit status, then the drive to please stockholders will revert to a drive towards provision of good, safe patient care.

[plummaddie]

Agree with the posting, but I do see this terrible medication error as a nursing error. Yes, it would have helped to have different coloring, shape, whatever on the heparin bottles, BUT meds (and especially drugs like heparin!) should always be double checked in pediatrics. I'm not letting the nurses out of this one (speaking as a nurse!)

[Gerbil]

Also speaking as a nurse, I'm surprised by your comment, I don't know one nurse

[Gerbil]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that we made it a policy in our hospital that all medications given for pt's

[rini]

It would have helped if nurses weren't overworked and short staffed. If they get any help, it's with filler medical assistants, not real nurses.