[An analysis of the quality of the clinical diagnosis based on autopsy data].

The findings from 4359 autopsies made in 4 Moscow hospitals during 1986 were analyzed with two proposed tables. The primary materials were processes with a computer. Table 1 includes data on the total number of unrecognized cases by the main disease, major complications, concomitant and underlying diseases in terms of their category and cause of diagnosis discrepancy. The rate of the discrepancy between clinical and postmortem diagnoses averaged 21.6 +/- 4.7% by the main disease, that of unrecognized fatal complications and major concomitant and underlying diseases was found to be 7.6 and some 2%, respectively. By the categories, the analysis of diagnosis discrepancy indicated 35, 58.6, and 6.4% in Categories I, II, and III, respectively. Table 2 (combined correlational one) makes it possible to study the range of diagnostic errors in various diseases and to find typical mistakes made by clinicians. Analyzing the quality of clinical diagnosis according to the given pattern is of advantage in routine practice to obtain comparable consistent data, to make a thorough examination, and to generalized discrepancy cases of clinical and postmortem diagnoses.