Scranton Misdiagnosis Lawyers
When patients entrust their health to a medical provider, they deserve to receive the same degree of skill and prudent care that a reasonable medical professional would show in a similar situation. The failure to meet this standard is known as medical negligence. One of the most common forms of medical malpractice is misdiagnosis, which occurs when a healthcare provider fails to properly identify and diagnose a patient’s medical condition.
There are many types of misdiagnosis including:
- Failure to properly diagnose underlying conditions.
- Failure to properly diagnose the cause of a health condition.
- Failure to properly diagnose the subtype of a properly diagnosed disease such as diabetes or heart disease.
- Failure to diagnose a condition related to the original disease.
- Failure to diagnose any complications that the original disease caused.
- Diagnosis of the wrong disease.
- Diagnosis of an illness when patient is actually healthy.
- Missed diagnosis.
- Delayed diagnosis.
A misdiagnosis can occur for many reasons. By their vary nature, some illnesses are inherently more difficult to diagnose. Familiar conditions that are well known may be over-diagnosed. By the same token, lack of publicity leads lesser known conditions to be more commonly under-diagnosed.
Mistakes can occur for many reasons. Physicians may make a misdiagnosis due to:
- Failure to pay attention or respond to a patient’s complaints or symptoms.
- Failure to order the proper tests that would lead to the correct diagnosis.
- Failure to refer a patient to a specialist in a timely manner.
- Familiarity with only the most common of the approximately 20,000 human diseases.
- Avoiding tests for rarer conditions due to the assumption that a patient does not want to pay the extra costs.
- Acceptance that a diagnosis of an overall disease is more important than confirming any subtypes.
- Lack of time (this may mean that rarer conditions get overlooked).
- Difficulty analyzing symptoms relating to emotional or mental well-being.
Human error may also affect the reliability of laboratory and pathology tests that are used to confirm or rule out diseases or illnesses. Human error can result in contaminated samples, mixed-up samples, improperly performed test procedures, and incorrect judgment in tests that require visual inspection. Also, all laboratory tests have known conditions under which they fail. They may show a false positive, wrongly indicating that you have a particular condition, or a false negative, wrongly indicating you do not have a condition. Either scenario will result in a misdiagnosis.
Two of the most frequently misdiagnosed illnesses are heart attacks and cancer. Although the most severe symptoms of heart attacks are hard to miss, there are varying degrees of severity. People who experience less serious symptoms are more likely to die from an undiagnosed heart attack. Missed or delayed diagnosis of cancer is also a common occurrence that can cause the disease to spread, causing disfiguring surgery, unnecessary chemotherapy and radiation therapy and, in the very worst cases, death.
If you or someone you love has been the victim of medical misdiagnosis, you may have a medical malpractice claim. You could be eligible to receive compensation for the damages that you have suffered. For more information regarding what must be done in order to bring a medical malpractice lawsuit involving a misdiagnosis, contact the Scranton misdiagnosis attorneys at Munley, Munley, & Cartwright, P.C., by calling us at (800) 318-LAW1 or contact us online. We have offices conveniently located in Scranton, Stroudsburg, Carbondale, Plains, Hazleton, Harrisburg and Hamlin, PA. Our initial consultation is free of charge and our goal is to provide exceptional legal services to our clients.
