A study conducted at the Louisiana State University Medical Center found that doctors failed to diagnose cancer properly in almost half the patients who later died. That was the conclusion reached by Dr. Elizabeth C. Burton, a pathologist, based on a detailed autopsy review.

With the number of autopsies performed nationwide at an all-time low, Burton decided to test the premise of many doctors that autopsies are unnecessary, given the advances in diagnostic technology.

• In the 1960s, 50 percent of all patients who died were autopsied -- a figure which has fallen to an average of 10 percent at teaching hospitals and as low as 5 percent in community-based hospitals.

• After reviewing 1,105 autopsies done between 1986 and 1995, Burton and her colleagues found a 44 percent discrepancy between cancer diagnoses made while the patient was still alive and the cancers found at autopsy.

• The most commonly missed cancers were in the respiratory tract, the gastrointestinal tract, and urinary and reproductive organs.

The editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, in which the study appears today, commented that the autopsy is "apparently the victim of a vast cultural delusion of denial."

Source: Ruth Larson, "Autopsy Study: Errors of Doctors’ Often Buried," Washington Times, October 14, 1998.

For JAMA abstract http://www.ama-assn.org/