Heart attack diagnoses wrong almost 10% of the time

A new study indicated this week that emergency room doctors are wrong about heart attacks in ER patients 9.2 percent of the time. Researchers from the study said that given the time sensitivity to diagnosing heart attacks in an ER environment, the diagnosis error percentage should be considered tolerable.

Is an 8 percent to 10 percent false positive rate tolerable? In this case, it should be. The mental stress and almost-immediate diagnosis that most go into a heart attack decision would crush many of us.

However, the researchers did say that every effort should be given to reduce the false positive heart attack diagnosis. Of course it should be -- but doctors are human too.