Aortic dissection
When there’s a tear in the wall of the aorta, blood rushes through and forces layers of the aorta to separate. “An aortic dissection, which can be fatal, has to be diagnosed very quickly, but it can present in dozens of different ways,” says Graber. “It can be very misleading and can confuse the doctor you’re seeing. As a result, they don’t do the correct tests quickly enough, and then you’ve got a diagnostic error.” A 2009 study found that nearly a third of patients suffering from aortic dissection were initially misdiagnosed.
