Ärztliches Denken – ärztliche Denkfehler

Clinical errors occur primarily during the process of making a diagnosis and when interpreting diagnostic tests. A diagnosis can be made either by pattern recognition or by analytical thinking (systematic differential diagnosis)—in everyday life, however, very fast and effective pattern recognition is used almost exclusively. The problem here is that diseases often do not present themselves in a typical or textbook manner; in these situations, the human brain is susceptible to systematic errors in reasoning. The most important clinical errors are premature closure, the lack of appreciation of findings that speak against the suspected diagnosis (“confirmation bias”) and the subjectively distorted perception of disease probabilities (“availability bias”).