Iatrogenic deaths contain a very few previously healthy patients.
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Iatrogenic deaths are most often related to medication or known high-risk surgical procedures.
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Iatrogenic death does not necessarily indicate malpractice.
Abstract
Purpose
An adverse event in health care leading to death is a significant event when assessing patient safety. This study was designed in order to assess, how many iatrogenic deaths are registered in Finland annually, and what type of treatment they are mostly related to.
Methods
Material was collected using cause of death-statistics that includes “manner of death”-classification in Finland in 2014–2015.
Results
There were 350 cases that met the criteria of the study. In a majority of the cases (264, 75%), a medico-legal autopsy was performed. This represents only 1.4% of all medicolegal autopsies during the study period in Finland. The cases were most often related to medication (30%) or known high-risk procedures such as gastrointestinal surgery (23%) and cardiothoracic surgery (11%). Only 12% of the cases had no prior significant medical history. Patient characteristics were somewhat different among the surgical disciplines, probably reflecting treatment practices.
Conclusion
Deaths that are classified as iatrogenic are mostly related to known high-risk surgery or medication. Further studies are needed to assess the true incidence of malpractice among this material.
