Awareness of hypercalcaemia in a hospital population?

In a hospital population all patients with hypercalcaemia were registered consecutively during a 6-month period. Fifty per cent of the patients having hypercalcaemia, which was defined as serum calcium concentrations (albumin corrected) above normal mean + 3 standard deviations, had a serum calcium analysis requested. Of these between 14% and 96%, dependent on the clinical diagnosis and the degree of hypercalcaemia, had the hypercalcaemia identified. Since the prevalence of hypercalcaemia was estimated to be 2.6% and only about 1:4 was identified by the clinicians, correct diagnosis of hypercalcaemia seems to be a problem.