It is likely that you or someone you know has experienced this scenario: you go to the doctor’s office with a list of symptoms, and are sent home with no diagnosis, or told you have “a virus” – but rest does not help. It is possible that the reason you are not improving is because our physician has failed to diagnose the condition causing your symptoms. This failure to diagnose can be harmless, with the patient recovering in her own time. However, as our medical malpractice attorneys know only too well, it can also be deadly, robbing the patient of precious days, weeks, months, or even years of treatment — and leading to irreversible permanent injury or death.
For this reason, about forty percent of medical malpractice cases involve the failure to diagnose a patient’s condition. Because medical malpractice cases are extremely difficult and expensive to pursue, most cases involve catastrophic injury or wrongful death. Accordingly, the most commonly misdiagnoses conditions in the United States include failure to diagnose heart attack, breast cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, and appendicitis.
As another example, experts estimate that 10 to 15 million people in the United States have undiagnosed latent tuberculosis. This condition can be treated and eliminated with antibiotics while the patient remains healthy, but can be much harder to treat if left unchecked, and can even be fatal.
Other commonly undiagnosed conditions include:
- Sexually-Transmitted Diseases
- Toxoplasmosis
- Otosclerosis
- Osteoporosis
- COPD
- Chronic lower respiratory disease
- Migraine
- Thyroid problems
- Parkinson’s Disease
- Macular degeneration
- Aneurysm
- Hemochramatosis
- Glaucoma
- Cryptosporiosis
- Celiac Disease
- Narcolepsy
If you have any questions about a possible medical malpractice claim, please give us a call us at 312-527-4500 or email us at info@passenlaw.com for a complimentary consultation. You can also learn more by following us on Twitter, reviewing our LinkedIn or Avvo.com pages, and by reviewing our website.