Alert over misdiagnosis of diabetes

New research has uncovered substantial evidence that there are about 100,000 people in England who have received a misdiagnosis about diabetes, it has emerged. A report by the Royal College of General Practitioners and NHS Diabetes found that thousands were being diagnosed with the wrong type of diabetes or mistakenly informed that they have the disease when they don’t.
It was shown that many patients have been misdiagnosed, misclassified or miscoded with diabetes on doctor’s lists, and that around 65 to 70 in every 500 people identified to have diabetes on a GP register will need to be re-examined about their condition.
The experts claim that about 50,000 people are diagnosed with diabetes that do not actually suffer from the disease, with a further 50,000 having being classified with the wrong type of diabetes.
The report also offers new advice on improving how diabetes is recorded, as it blames the misdiagnosis on mistakes resulting from entering information, and also a lack of understanding among doctors or other healthcare professionals .
The biggest problem identified in the report was changing a diagnosis from type 2 diabetes to type 1 . The report stated “This, potentially, could have a considerable impact on patient care as the guidelines for insulin use in Type 2 are very different from those in Type 1.”