100,000 NHS patients given wrong diabetes diagnosis, says report

(Source: The Guardian, 02 March 2011)
The NHS has pledged to improve the diagnosis of diabetes after it emerged that about 100,000 people have either been misdiagnosed with the disease or wrongly told which form of it they have. About 2% of the 2.4m registered diabetics in England – 50,000 people – have been told they are suffering from the disease when they do not have it, a report by the Royal College of General Practitioners and NHS Diabetes found.

And a further 2% of those people – another 50,000 patients – have been told they have Type 1 diabetes when they actually have Type 2, or vice versa, the research added. Diabetes is one of the fastest growing medical conditions. About 2.8m people in the UK have been diagnosed with it, and the total is increasing by 150,000 cases a year, mainly due to the growing prevalence of obesity, which is closely linked to Type 2. About 2.5m of the 2.8m have Type 2. Read more