Multidisciplinary teams improve diagnoses in ILD
FROM CHEST
For the study, the researchers tracked pre-MDD and MDD diagnoses of 938 consecutive patients with possible ILD who were discussed during 2005-2015. Of these patients, referring physicians made preliminary diagnoses in 49% of cases; in the rest, physicians either failed to develop a diagnosis or offered multiple possible diagnoses.
MDD teams produced a change in diagnosis in 191 – 42% – of patients with a pre-MDD diagnosis. Another condition was diagnosed in 118 of these patients, and the MDD teams declined to classify the other 73 patients pending further investigation.
The MDD teams also were able to produce diagnoses in 80% of cases when referring physicians could not come up with diagnoses.
“Discrepancy between pre-MDD diagnosis before work-up and discussion was remarkable,” the study authors wrote, estimating that MDD added value for 70% of referred patients.
