Factors associated with misdiagnosis: the usefulness of necropsy

In the past decades, autopsy rates have decreased over the time partly because of the availability of advanced and new technologies. However, autopsies remain a valuable examination as a tool for quality control as they help detecting clinical misdiagnosis. Patients in the intensive care unit may be especially susceptible to suffer harm from diagnostic errors. In the current literature discrepancies between clinical and pathological diagnoses are well documented, however we have not found studies that analyze the factors associated with the occurrence of such errors.