Failure to diagnose medical problems for people is one of the most prevalent issues doctors face today. Whether it is due to their own negligence or the carelessness of other healthcare professionals around them, when the proper precautions are not taken it is patients like you who become victims of medical malpractice.

One new test being worked on to prevent heart failure misdiagnoses is underway at the Cleveland Clinic Ohio. It is a simple "breath test" that takes about 5 seconds to administer and could save millions of lives in the future. Early diagnosis of heart failure can increase a person's life; however, most cases don't end up being diagnosed until after someone has suffered from a heart attack.

Heart failure takes place when a person's heart fails to pump enough blood and/or oxygen to the support the rest of the body's organs and it is estimated that nearly 5.7 million people in the United States suffer from heart failure. Some other factors that can negatively contribute to heart failure are obesity and blood pressure.

One physician from the Cleveland Clinic's Pulmonary Vascular Program says that basically anything in someone's blood that isn't natural has the potential to cause instability in the body. With the new heart failure breath test, patients will simply blow into a breath capture device and, within minutes, millions of molecules from a person's breath are analyzed and accessible.

So far, Cleveland Clinic's only research study of the breath test has found it to be 100% accurate and hopefully, before long, the invention will make its way around the country and throughout the world once more testing is completed. With the rate and failure of many doctors to diagnose patients correctly today, the advent of such a simple tool as the breath test is welcome technology.

Source: King5, "Breath test could help doctors diagnose heart failure" 11 September 2013