Asked to tell which of five likely bioterror weapons would cause specific symptoms, emergency room doctors in Chicago did poorly.

The 36 physicians and 37 doctors in training missed more than two-thirds of the questions about chemical weapons and more than half of those about biological agents, according to a report presented Sunday at the convention of the American College of Emergency Medicine in New Orleans.

"It was meant to be hard," said Dr. S.B. Chan, research director for emergency medicine residency at Resurrection Medical Center in Chicago, where the study was done. Dr. Joseph Lester conducted the survey last year and discussed his findings Sunday.

The study is disturbing but too small to make any conclusions about emergency room doctors in general, said Dr. Peter DeBlieux, director of emergency medicine services at LSU Health Care Systems Division, which runs Louisiana's charity hospital system.

Chan agreed. "This is a very preliminary, pilot study," he said. "What we wanted to do is draw attention to the fact that this is probably something that needs better education in our specialty."

A much larger study of residents -- doctors in training -- in the more general field of internal medicine found last year that they misdiagnosed diseases that could be spread as weapons of terror more than half the time. It also found that they did quite well after Internet-based training.

DeBlieux said bioterrorism is becoming a bigger part of emergency medicine training.

"This is cutting-edge medicine -- not different from a brand-new disease," he said.

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ACEP: http://www.acep.org

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)