What You need to Know About Failure to Read Mammograms and X-Rays
Patients depend on hospital staff such as nurses and doctors and medical care practitioners to perform their duties to the best of their abilities and on par with other medical organizations to offer quality medical care. However, medical professionals make grave errors sometimes, which could impact the well-being and health of a patient substantially.
What is a Failure to Diagnose Cancer?
There are millions of people all over the world who are diagnosed with cancer every year, and many more that lose their battle with the disease. The National Cancer Institute states that during their lifetime, one out of every two people will be diagnosed with some type of cancer. If cancer is detected early enough, it can be treatable through a combination of radiation, chemotherapy, and certain drugs. But it is important that it is detected and diagnosed in an early stage, so that effective treatment gives the patient a good chance of survival.
What is the Key Question in a Failure to Diagnose in a Medical Malpractice Case?
Patients approach doctors and other healthcare providers with trust and in the belief that their illnesses will be treated properly and cured. However, sometimes, this faith is misplaced and the doctor or healthcare provider is negligent leading to further heath complications or more pain and suffering.
Unable to make a diagnosis, doctors turn to DNA technology
Researchers have been sequencing DNA for years in an effort to identify pathogens. However, DNA analysis hasn’t been widely used to diagnose individual patients’ infections because of the time involved in sorting through DNA fragments that might number in the millions. Yet software is already being developed that can compare DNA fragments with databases of stored genetic sequences.
Study indicates alarming outpatient misdiagnosis rate
Readers of this medical malpractice blog may be familiar with some patient safety initiatives focusing on new programs under the Affordable Care Act. What readers may not realize, however, is that a majority of these and other patient safety improvement programs have been limited to inpatient hospital care.
Newborn’s undiagnosed congenital heart defect results in tragedy
A vitamin a day may not actually keep the doctor away, but there is benefit to certain preventative practices, such as screening tests. Unfortunately, patients may not realize that they may be at risk for certain conditions, and a doctor’s failure to advise a patient about recommended tests may allow conditions to go undiagnosed — until it is too late. In such cases, an injured patient or surviving loved one may need to talk with a medical malpractice attorney about holding doctors accountable for their potentially negligent care.
Medical malpractice suit alleges failure to correctly diagnose
New York Yankees fans may be interested in the latest addition to third baseman Alex Rodriguez’s media saga.
Couple sues Veteran Affairs for failure to diagnose cancer
For New York residents, one of the worst pieces of news the doctor can provide is a diagnosis of cancer. Even worse, however, is the failure to diagnose cancer that exists so patients can get timely treatment. For one man in New York, the diagnosis of skin cancer may have come too late for effective treatment.
Family receives compensation after negligence-related death
New York residents may be interested in a recent jury decision which awarded a family $2.4 million. In 2007, a woman died after seeking emergency treatment for severe pain in her abdomen and back. Two years earlier, she had undergone gastric bypass surgery, a relatively common procedure. Often, bowel obstruction is a complication in this type of surgery, but the suit claimed that the failure to diagnose this lead to her death.
Breast density law aims to reduce missed diagnoses of cancer
When a doctor looks at a mammogram, he or she could mistake a tumor for dense breast tissue. In fact, a 2011 study by the Mayo Clinic showed that in 75 percent of women’s mammograms that indicated dense breast tissue, doctors failed to detect cancer that was present.