When 304 doctors across the U.S. looked at a list of chronic kidney disease symptoms, general practitioners misdiagnosed 59 percent to 78 percent of the time.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine said that once the disease was diagnosed, 97 percent of the “mock patients” got proper treatment from a specialist, but in too many instances, the illness went undetected.
“Kidney disease is a disease that over time would progress towards kidney failure, and that can only be treated with dialysis or a transplant. It can also lead to death by cardiac failure,” said Dr. Ebony Boulware, lead author of the study and an assistant professor at Hopkins. “We, as physicians, can certainly do better.”
Family physicians and general practitioners only referred the mock patients to a nephrologist for further treatment 76 percent to 81 percent of the time, according to the study published in the August issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.
They based their decisions on a simulated medical record that, based on guidelines issued in 2000 by the National Kidney Foundation, should result in a referral to a nephrologist for evaluation.
As far as the failure to refer, Boulware said there are only 5,000 nephrologists in the country to treat more than 10 million Americans with chronic kidney disease.
