Iatrogenesis
Iatrogenesis is the causation of a disease, a harmful complication, or other ill effect by any medical activity, including diagnosis, intervention, error, or negligence.
Iatrogenic avenues
Risk associated with medical interventions
- Adverse effects of prescription drugs or vaccines
- Overuse of drugs (causing, for example, antibiotic resistance in bacteria)
- Prescription drug interaction
Medical errors
- Incorrect typos
- Faulty procedures, techniques, information, methods, or equipment
- Negligence
- Hospital-acquired infections
Causes and consequences
Medical error and negligence
Iatrogenic conditions need not result from
The incidence of iatrogenesis may be misleading in some cases. For example, a ruptured aortic aneurysm is fatal in most cases; the survival rate for treatment of a ruptured aortic aneurysm is under 25%. Patients who die during or after an operation will still be considered iatrogenic deaths, but the procedure itself remains a better bet than the probability of death if left untreated.
Other situations may involve actual negligence or faulty procedures, such as when pharmacotherapists produce handwritten prescriptions for drugs.
Another situation may involve negligence where patients are brushed off and not given proper care due to providers holding prejudice for reasons such as sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, immigration status, etc. This can cause mistrust between patients and providers, leading to patients to not go in for treatment, resulting in more deaths.
Adverse effects
A very common iatrogenic effect is caused by
The evolution of
Certain drugs and vaccines are toxic in their own right in therapeutic doses because of their mechanism of action.
Adverse effects can appear mechanically. The design of some surgical instruments may be decades old, hence certain adverse effects (such as tissue trauma) may never have been properly characterized.[citation needed]
Psychiatry
In psychiatry, iatrogenesis can occur due to
Some populations may be at risk of underdiagnosis or misdiagnosis of psychiatric disorders, including those identified as having
The degree of association of any particular condition with iatrogenesis is unclear and in some cases controversial. The over-diagnosis of psychiatric conditions (with the assignment of mental illness terminology) may relate primarily to clinician dependence on subjective criteria.[19] The assignment of pathological nomenclature is rarely a benign process and can easily rise[clarification needed] to the level of emotional iatrogenesis, especially when no alternatives outside of the diagnostic naming process have been considered. Many former patients come to the conclusion that their difficulties are largely the result of the power relationships inherent in psychiatric treatment, which has led to the rise of the anti-psychiatry movement.[20][21]
Iatrogenic poverty
Meessen et al. used the term "iatrogenic poverty" to describe impoverishment induced by medical care.[22] Impoverishment is described for households exposed to catastrophic health expenditure[23] or to hardship financing.[24] Every year, worldwide, over 100,000 households fall into poverty due to health care expenses. A study reported that in the United States in 2001, illness and medical debt caused half of all personal bankruptcies.[25] Especially in countries in economic transition, the willingness to pay for health care is increasing, and the supply side does not stay behind and develops very fast. But the regulatory and protective capacity in those countries is often lagging behind. Patients easily fall into a vicious cycle of illness, ineffective therapies, consumption of savings, indebtedness, sale of productive assets, and eventually poverty.
Social and cultural iatrogenesis
The 20th-century social critic Ivan Illich broadened the concept of medical iatrogenesis in his 1974 book Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health[26] by defining it at three levels.
- First, clinical iatrogenesis is the injury done to patients by ineffective, unsafe, and erroneous treatments as described above. In this regard, he described the need for evidence-based medicine 20 years before the term was coined.[27]
- Second, at another level social iatrogenesis is the medicalization of life in which medical professionals, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device companies have a vested interest in sponsoring sickness by creating unrealistic health demands that require more treatments or treating non-diseases that are part of the normal human experience, such as age-related declines. In this way, aspects of medical practice and medical industries can produce social harm in which society members ultimately become less healthy or excessively dependent on institutional care. He argued that medical education of physicians contributes to medicalization of society because they are trained predominantly for diagnosing and treating illness, therefore they focus on disease rather than on health. Iatrogenic poverty (above) can be considered a specific manifestation of social iatrogenesis.
- Third, cultural iatrogenesis refers to the destruction of traditional ways of dealing with, and making sense of, death, suffering, and sickness. In this way the medicalization of life leads to cultural harm as society members lose their autonomous coping skills. It is worth noting that in these critiques "Illich does not reject all benefits of modern society but rejects those that involve unwarranted dependency and exploitation."[28]
Epidemiology
Globally it is estimated that 142,000 people died in 2013 from adverse effects of medical treatment, an increase of 51 percent from 94,000 in 1990.[8] In the United States, estimated deaths per year include: [29][30][31][32]
- 12,000 due to unnecessary surgery
- 7,000 due to medication errors in hospitals
- 20,000 due to other errors in hospitals
- 80,000 due to nosocomialinfections in hospitals
- 106,000 due to non-error, negative effects of drugs
Based on these figures, iatrogenesis may cause as many as 225,000 deaths per year in the United States (excluding recognizable error). An earlier
History
The term "iatrogenesis" means brought forth by a healer, from the Greek iatros (ἰατρός, "healer") and genesis (γένεσις, "origin"); as such, in its earlier forms, it could refer to good or bad effects.
Since at least the time of Hippocrates, people have recognized the potentially damaging effects of medical intervention. "First do no harm" (primum non nocere) is a primary Hippocratic mandate in modern medical ethics. Iatrogenic illness or death caused purposefully or by avoidable error or negligence on the healer's part became a punishable offense in many civilizations.[33]
The transfer of pathogens from the autopsy room to maternity patients, leading to shocking historical mortality rates of puerperal fever (also known as "childbed fever") at maternity institutions in the 19th century, was a major iatrogenic catastrophe of the era. The infection mechanism was first identified by Ignaz Semmelweis.[34]
With the development of
See also
- Adverse drug reaction
- Antifragile
- Bioethics
- Bloodletting
- Cascade effect
- Classification of Pharmaco-Therapeutic Referrals
- Fatal Care: Survive in the U.S. Health System
- Hospital-acquired infection
- Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine
- List of medicine contamination incidents
- Medical malpractice
- Medicalization
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Nocebo
- Paradoxical reaction
- Patient safety
- Placebo
- Polypharmacy
- Pressure ulcer
- Quaternary prevention
- Risk–benefit ratio
- Sentinel event
References
- ^ a b "Iatrogenic", Merriam-Webster.com, Merriam-Webster, Inc., accessed 27 Jun 2020.
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- ^ "Intervention Mistakes and How to Avoid Them". Addiction Helper. 11 December 2014. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
- ^ a b "iatrogenesis", A Dictionary of Sociology, Encyclopedia.com. updated 31 May 2020.
- ^ David Kuhl, What Dying People Want: Practical Wisdom for the End of Life (New York: PublicAffairs, 2002), p 55.
- Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), indexing "iatrogenesis", esp. pp. 328–329.
- PMID 26063472.)
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- ^ Boscarino, JA (2004). "Evaluation of the Iatrogenic Effects of Studying Persons Recently Exposed to a Mass Urban Disaster" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 June 2008. Retrieved 4 May 2008.
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- ^ Donald C. Goff, M. D. (4 May 2011). "Antipsychotics and the Shrinking Brain". Psychiatric Times. Psychiatric Times Vol 28 No 4. 28 (4). Retrieved 5 June 2020.
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- ^ "Medical Bills Leading Cause of Bankruptcy, Harvard Study Finds". 3 February 2005.
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- ^ PMID 10904513. Archived from the original(PDF) on 24 December 2010. Retrieved 20 January 2020.
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