What to expect if Pfizer's takeover fails, page-99

As published in Frontiers in Pediatrics doi: 10.3389/fped.2021.736018:

Diagnostic errors are common in acute pediatric respiratory disease: a prospective, single-blinded multicenter diagnostic accuracy study in Australian Emergency Departments.

Stated that:

• There is limited data available for the prevalence of misdiagnosis in pediatric acute-care settings.

• Respiratory illnesses, which are particularly challenging to diagnose, are the most frequent reason for presentation to pediatric emergency departments.

• In well-resourced emergency departments, we have identified a previously unrecognised high diagnostic error rate for acute childhood respiratory disorders, particularly in pneumonia and bronchiolitis.

• Between 6.9% and 14.5% of children were inappropriately prescribed based on their eventual diagnosis.


As previously stated elsewhere:

• Typically, doctors use stethoscopes to listen to the lungs as the first indication of a respiratory problem.

• The information available from these sounds is compromised as the sound has to first pass through the chest musculature which muffles high-pitched components of respiratory sounds.

• In contrast, the lungs are directly connected to the atmosphere during respiratory events such as coughs.

• These audible sounds, used by ResApp, contain significantly more information than the sounds picked up by a stethoscope.

• ResApp’s approach is automated and removes the need for human interpretation of respiratory sounds.