Failure to diagnose herniated discs in a depressed 43-year-old woman.
A high comorbidity is known to exist between psychiatric illness and chronic pain (I. Elman, J.K. Zubieta, D. Borsook. The missing p in psychiatric training: why it is important to teach pain to psychiatrists. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2011;1:12-20). We report on the case of a middle-aged woman for whom preexisting psychiatric illness with a concurrent affective episode may have contributed to the failure by an array of clinicians across specialties to recognize an evolving surgical emergency.
Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, USA. mhanau@partners.org
Michael S
MS
Hanau
D000328:Adult; D003863:Depression / Q000150:complications*; D003951:Diagnostic Errors; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007405:Intervertebral Disc Displacement / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology*