A perforated colon case report raises a few issues

When a medical paper is featured on the Daily Mail website, you know it’s going to be something odd.

An autistic young man with prior hospitalizations for chronic constipation and megacolon was admitted to a hospital in London, UK with a markedly distended abdomen. A CT scan showed a dilated rectum and colon with a diameter as large as 18 cm (7 inches).

He was treated conservatively for two days with laxatives. Enemas were ordered, but the patient declined. He then developed peritonitis, kidney dysfunction, mental status changes, and metabolic acidosis.

Patient worries after accessing his chest x-ray report online

I received an email a few days ago. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I would like some advice please. I am a 46-year-old male with an off and on cough for 4-5 months. I have never smoked. After my primary care physician examined me, he ordered a chest x ray. A few days later I got a call from the doctor who said my x ray was normal. I was happy to hear that, but I am enrolled with My Chart which allows you to review your results online. Well, I read it and to me it doesn't sound what you would call totally normal, but I have no medical training so I could be wrong. I copied and pasted the report from the radiologist below. What concerns me is the "elevation" he refers to and using the word "fairly" clear lungs. Should I ask for another test or see another doctor for an opinion? If I was your family member would you suggest looking into this more?

CLINICAL INFORMATION: Cough

FINDINGS: The frontal view demonstrates fairly clear lungs with slightly increased elevation of the left hemidiaphragm compared with the prior study. This may be at least partially caused by air in the adjacent bowel. No pleural effusion or pneumothorax is noted. The cardiomediastinal silhouette is unremarkable. The lateral view demonstrates fairly stable appearance of the lung bases compared with the previous study.

More proof medical error is not the third leading cause of death

Over the last 20 years, estimates of the number of deaths caused by medical error have risen from 44,000-98,000 in 1999 [1] all the way up to 440,000 [2] and 251,000 [3]. Despite my efforts [4, 5] and those of others [6, 7] to debunk these guesses, they continue to permeate the lay press. If you Google “third leading cause of death,” you will find countless headlines naming medical error.

The papers claiming medical errors cause so many deaths assume that all complications result from errors and all complications are preventable. They extrapolate their final numbers from small studies not designed to or capable of estimating deaths due to medical error nationwide.

The most recent figures available from the National Hospital Discharge Survey [8] state that the number of hospital deaths dropped from 776,000 in the year 2000 to 715,000 in 2010. It is simply not plausible that 251,000 (35%) or 440,000 (61%) inpatient deaths are due to medical error.

A recent study [9] from Norway found that of 1000 consecutive in-hospital deaths reviewed, only 42 (4.2%) were judged to be probably (greater than a 50% chance) to definitely avoidable.