Medical Mysteries: Her maddening cough had an unexpected cause - WaPo

[question everything]

4. Some explanations (from the story)

Why did multiple doctors fail to suspect a heart problem?

“Women can present very differently than the arm numbness, chest pain, elephant-sitting-on-the-chest” feelings described by men, Kamath noted. Too often, she added, their symptoms “are dismissed or not even looked into.”

The time pressures under which doctors operate, the cardiologist said, may have been a factor. “It took me sitting down with her for a while to make me think this was cardiac,” Kamath said. “That may not have been the case if somebody had 10 minutes” for an appointment.

Anchoring bias, a common cause of medical errors in which doctors focus on a single piece of information early in the process without considering subsequent data, may have played a role.

Then there’s the possible role of telemedicine, which can impede close observation, an essential clinical tool. The pulmonologist never saw Meyer in person — every appointment was virtual.
Kamath said she tells her patients “there’s nothing that will replace a good physical exam, and that’s why they have to come in.”