An Autopsy Study of Cancer Patients

At the Boston City Hospital between 1955 and 1965 one fourth of all autopsies involved cancer patients. Forty percent of these 2,734 patients had serious clinical errors for diagnosing cancer, and 63% of patients with these errors died from cancer. Twenty-six percent of all patients reviewed had clinically undiagnosed cancer, and 45% of these neoplasms were fatal. Nonmalignant diseases caused death in 24% of all cancer patients reviewed. Generally, errors in clinical diagnoses of cancer were most common with the most common cancers. Cancer patients were almost a decade older than control patients without cancer.