title: Adams a et al (2006)the influence of patient's age on clinical decision-making about coronary heart disease in the usa and the uk. ageing and society 26 303-321.
abstract: Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a leading cause of mortality in people over 65. There is an increased likelihood of co-morbidity in older people and they often have atypical symptoms of disease. For this reason it would be expected that doctors seeing older patients would consider a greater range of differential diagnosis. In this study professional actors portrayed patients who were either 55 or 75. Doctors were asked to view a video of a mock consultation with one of these 'patients'. Any diagnostic inferences the doctors made after watching the video were recorded. Results showed that, although there was overt evidence of ageism, doctors did not take full account of older people's disease predisposition. This amounts to an age-bias in the potential for missing diagnoses. With nurses increasingly being the first point of contact it is important that they are aware of increased complexity of making an accurate diagnosis in older people.