Medical Misdiagnosis
Attorney

Wrong Diagnosis Lawsuit in California and Nevada

Misdiagnosis can lead to very severe injuries, often even death. Patients who have been misdiagnosed may need future treatments for years to come. Doctors always have to uphold the standard of care and actually assess their patients for any treatments they may need. But, unfortunately, sometimes doctors incorrectly diagnose their patients and make mistakes when ordering treatments.

According to a Johns Hopkins study, more than 250,000 people die in the United States every year from a medical misdiagnosis. Medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death in the United States. Our attorneys believe that patients should not have to be victims of doctors’ negligence. Our team works diligently to make sure that victims receive financial compensation for their injuries. A misdiagnosis can results in severe injuries, even unpreventable harm. Our attorneys are available 24/7, and we hold free, no-risk consultations for you to discuss your claim. Contact us today to see if you have a viable medical malpractice claim.

How Does a Medical Misdiagnosis Occur?

There are several different ways a medical misdiagnosis can occur. Below are the different types of examples our attorneys have most commonly seen in medical malpractice cases in California and Nevada.

• When the doctor fails to correctly read test results.
• When the doctor fails to order the right tests to treat the patient.
• When the doctor fails to accurately assess the patient.
• When the doctor fails to understand the patient’s symptoms that are being communicated to him.
• When the doctor fails to read the patient’s medical history.

If you or a loved one have been involved in any of the above circumstances of medical negligence, contact our attorneys today for free, no-risk consultation to discuss your case, thoroughly analyze the different potential defendants of your case, help determine liability, and get a idea as to how much you could potentially receive in damages.

Types of Medical Misdiagnosis

• Misdiagnosis (Wrong Diagnosis) – This type of medical malpractice occurs when a doctor examines a patient and determines that they have the wrong illness. This is especially problematic in cases such as heart attack or stroke where the threat to the patient’s life tends to be immediate. Misdiagnosis can lead to the prescribing of the wrong drugs, the wrong treatments, or the use of treatments that can worsen the patient’s condition. Because misdiagnosis causes the real illness to remain untreated, the consequences of such mistakes can lead to years of suffering, serious injuries, or even death for the patient. If a reasonable, competent doctor would have created a list with the correct diagnosis on it, then the doctor in question may have acted negligently if they failed to do so under the same circumstances.
• Delayed Diagnosis or Failure to Diagnosis in a Reasonable Amount of Time – The doctor fails to make the correct diagnosis right away, but eventually makes the right diagnosis of the illness. This is the most common type of diagnostic error in these medical malpractice cases. When it comes to treating time-critical illnesses such as heart attack, stroke, or cancer, a delay in diagnosis can directly lead to serious injury or death as a result.
• Missed Diagnosis – These types of misdiagnoses occur when there was no diagnosis made even though the patient was suffering from some sort of illness. The reason for missing the diagnosis is not always the doctor’s fault, and for cases where it is due to faulty equipment or bad data from a lab technician, the equipment manufacturer or the lab tech may be able to be held responsible instead.
• Failure to Diagnose Related or Unrelated Disease – In these cases, the doctor does make a correct diagnosis of the primary condition, but fails to diagnosis another disease that the patient is suffering from. A missed diagnosis can be considered to be negligent for a related disease if it has a high incidence of occurrence in patients with the primary disease. A missed diagnosis of an unrelated disease is not always considered to be negligence.
• Failure to Recognize Complications – The doctor correctly diagnoses the primary condition of the patient but fails to recognize the factors or complications which aggravate or worsen the illness.

Consequences of Medical Misdiagnosis

A medical misdiagnosis can sometimes lead to:

• The patient not receiving treatment at all;
• Unnecessary treatment;
• Incorrect treatment.

If you have suffered any of these above circumstances, you may have suffered devastating effects. Our experienced medical misdiagnosis attorneys believe that no person should be a victim in any of these circumstances. Contact us today to determine how you could receive financial compensation for your injuries.

Commonly Misdiagnosed Diseases & Illnesses

These are some of the most commonly misdiagnosed medical conditions:

• Acute Myocardial Infarction (heart attack);
• Breast Cancer;
• Cervical cancer;
• Pulmonary Embolism;
• Diabetes;
• Meningitis;
• Testicular Cancer;
• Ovarian Cancer;
• Prostate Cancer;
• Stroke;
• Tuberculosis;
• Appendicitis.

Misdiagnosis in the medical field is more common than most believe. With many of the most common illnesses that are undiagnosed leading to serious injury or death, medical misdiagnosis costs the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans each year.

Injuries From a Medical Misdiagnosis

Misdiagnosis causes many different types of injuries. Injuries include, but are not limited to:

• Unnecessary surgery;
• Increased risk of complications or death;
• Unnecessary exposure to potentially harmful treatments, such as in the case with chemotherapy or radiation for a misdiagnosed cancer;
• Side effects from taking unnecessary drugs as treatment;
• Risk of death.

Legal Elements for a Medical Misdiagnosis Lawsuit

When an attorney is representing you in a medical misdiagnosis lawsuit in California, there are certain elements that must be met. That’s why it is very important to hire an experienced and skilled medical malpractice attorney in order to be able to prove all these elements and determine liability. These three elements must be proven in a medical malpractice case to show that the doctor was responsible for the patient’s injury:

• There was a doctor-patient relationship that existed before the diagnosis.
• The doctor acted negligently in the sense that they did not provide treatment in a reasonably competent and skilled manner.
• The negligent actions of the doctor caused the patient to suffer injury.

The key is that the doctor must have acted negligently in some way that caused injury to the patient for it to be considered malpractice. In most cases, the second, the third, or a combination of the two elements is proven to create a winning case for the injured patient.

Proving Negligence in Misdiagnosis Cases

There are a number of ways in which doctors can act in a negligent way when diagnosing a patient, but regardless of how bad a victim’s injuries are, it still must be able to be proven that those injuries were caused by negligence on part of the physician or the medical staff. To prove that the doctor was negligent, the patient will need to show that:

• The doctor failed to perform the proper tests to rule out likely possibilities before arriving at a definitive diagnosis, or
• The doctor did not include all of the potentially likely illnesses in their differential diagnosis list where a competent and knowledgeable doctor would have in the same situation, or
• The doctor did not perform their differential diagnosis of the patient properly.

In most cases, an expert witness needs to be brought to the stand to give testimony on how the doctor employed differential diagnosis and whether or not it was performed correctly.

Once it has been established that the doctor acted in a negligent way, then the patient’s legal team can begin proving causation that the misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis directly led to the patient’s injuries. This can be done by showing that if the right diagnosis was made, the injuries or suffering would not have occurred in the first place.

What type of damages could I receive in my medical misdiagnosis case?

 Each medical misdiagnosis case has different facts that could determine the amount of damages. To get an idea as to how much you could potentially collect in damages, contact our attorneys today. Our experienced team of California and Nevada medical malpractice lawyers can help victims recover compensation for a variety of different damages they’ve suffered as a result. This can include compensation for:

• Physical damages
• Emotional suffering
• Hospital and medical bills
• Lost wages
• Losses in earning capacity
• Property damage
• Loss of consortium and affection
• Punitive damages: punitive damages depend on the state that you are located in. California and Nevada very rarely allow punitive damages. But, if you could show that the health care provider acted with malice, you could potentially receive punitive damages for a medical misdiagnosis.