Question 1

How could my disease or injury be missed?

Accepted Answer

Three basic types of medical diagnostic errors happen: failure to diagnose, misdiagnosis, and delayed diagnosis. Let’s look at each one:

1. Failure to diagnose

If a physician does not figure out what’s wrong with you, then he or she will also fail to treat what ails you.

For instance, if your doctor gives you a physical, but fails to notice you have cancer, then you have a disease that you aren’t being treated for. When the disease finally is discovered, it may be too late to treat it successfully.

Doctors and other medical professionals are trained to be observant and to order diagnostic tests if needed, so they can make a correct diagnosis. Doctors can also get the opinion of other doctors in their quest for a correct diagnosis. Serious injuries and illnesses should not be overlooked by trained professionals.

2. Misdiagnosis

If a physician misdiagnoses your ailment, he or she thinks something is wrong with you…but not what’s actually wrong with you. You’re not only NOT being treated for the condition you have, but you are also being treated, needlessly, for a condition you don’t have.

Suppose your doctor tells you your stomach pain is just indigestion when it’s actually appendicitis. He gives you some antacids, and you go home. Hours later, your appendix ruptures, forcing you to undergo emergency surgery. Your doctor didn’t catch what you had earlier, and that was a misdiagnosis.

3. Delayed diagnosis

Many illnesses are aggressive, and the sooner treatment is started, the more effective it will be. If diagnosis is delayed, treatment is delayed. If a treatment is delayed, the disease may advance and do serious organ damage before treatment can begin.

In the case of an injury like a broken bone, the bone may have started to heal incorrectly, and will now need to be re-broken.

An untreated condition doesn’t heal on its own: it needs competent medical care in a timely manner. Delay can be painful - or worse, deadly.

Question 2

What kinds of things are commonly misdiagnosed?

Accepted Answer

Here are 10 medical conditions that are commonly missed by doctors or hospitals:

Cancer (up to 28 percent of the time)
Heart attack (women are more likely to suffer a missed diagnosis)
Depression (needs both physical and psychological exams)
Celiac disease (83 percent are undiagnosed or misdiagnosed)
Stroke (often misdiagnosed as vertigo, migraine, or alcohol!)
Lyme disease (people usually have this for more than a year before it’s diagnosed)
Fibromyalgia (mistaken for arthritis or Lupus)
Thyroid conditions (mistaken for depression)
Aortic dissection (nearly one-third of patients were first misdiagnosed)
Pulmonary embolism (33 percent of patients were sent home or misdiagnosed)

Many of these can be fatal if not treated, so it’s very important that doctors and hospitals make every effort to check every patient thoroughly.

Question 3

If my diagnosis was mishandled, should I call an attorney?

Accepted Answer

Unfortunate things happen in life; what’s important is how we recover and move on. Some medical errors are minor and understandable. Others are not, and these must be dealt with.

At GibsonSingleton Virginia Injury Attorneys, our mission is to give you the tools you need to heal and move forward with your life. We want to make sure that your current and long-term medical costs are taken care of, and that you won’t be left in debt. Our experienced and compassionate legal team will do everything in our power to make you and your family whole again. There’s no cost to begin your path to recovery. Just dial (804) 413-6777 or toll-free at (855) 781-6777 for a free case evaluation.

Virginia failure to diagnose attorneys

We care about patients who have been hurt and seek justice for them