Medical Conditions that are Commonly Misdiagnosed

Misdiagnosis of your medical condition may be due to simple mistakes or possibly medical malpractice under certain circumstances. Here are six medical conditions that are commonly misdiagnosed. Discuss your specific situation with a Tulsa injury attorney today. 

Your medical professional owes you a specified duty of care, meaning that they have to act as a reasonable physician would given the circumstances. A medical professional’s failure to properly diagnose your medical condition can be a breach of this duty. This is otherwise known as medical malpractice. The lost time when it comes to treating your ailment can seriously harm your long-term prognosis. With that in mind, you should consult with a Tulsa personal injury attorney to see if you have a medical malpractice claim against the physician.

Here are some medical conditions that are commonly misdiagnosed. When the physician’s error causes you harm, you may be entitled to financial compensation.

Strokes

The time following a stroke is critical in terms of treatment and rehabilitation. However, doctors miss tens of thousands of strokes each year, failing to notice that signs such as vertigo, dizziness, confusion, and numbness in the face are consistent with a stroke. As a result, patients lose valuable time to get the immediate medical attention that they need.

Lyme’s Disease

This tick-borne disease often carries severe life-altering symptoms, but doctors often diagnose it after other potential diagnoses prove not to be true. This means that the patient could suffer for years with the symptoms of a disease that can worsen over time if it is not treated. One study showed that it takes physicians over a year to diagnose Lyme’s Disease. Doctors may think that their patient has the flu or some other infection while the person loses valuable treatment time. 

Heart Attacks

When it comes to detecting a heart attack, minutes can matter as life-saving treatment is often critical to save the patient. However, doctors can even confuse a serious heart attack with other aches and pains, including:

• Indigestion
• Anxiety
• Heartburn
• Other musculoskeletal pain

Physicians need to take the time to order EKGs and other critical cardiac tests to rule out or diagnose a heart attack. Often, the physician error occurs because, for example, doctors have simply assumed that someone was too young to be having a heart attack, or they failed to consider the possibility that a woman could be suffering a cardiac event.

Thyroid Conditions

Your thyroid has a very large impact on your quality of life. When it does not work properly, it can cause hormonal imbalances that can cause things such as:

• Weight fluctuation
• Weakness and fatigue
• Muscle pain

However, symptoms of a thyroid condition can often appear similar to other illnesses unless the doctor sends you for the proper tests to check your thyroid. Many of these conditions are treatable once they are diagnosed. However, the failure to diagnose you can cause crippling symptoms for a period of time.  

Cancer

Cancer is diagnosed after the doctor spots the abnormality and runs the tests. However, the physician sometimes only runs the tests after they know from other symptoms that cancer could be a possibility. In the meantime, the disease could be progressing undetected, costing the patient valuable treatment time. Sometimes, doctors need to devote some time and thought to a patient’s case to try to cover all the alternatives, one of them being the possibility of cancer. The rates of cancer misdiagnosis can be as high as 44% for certain types of cancer.

Fibromyalgia

The symptoms of this disease appear to be very similar to those of rheumatoid and autoimmune diseases such as lupus. Since one of the hallmarks of this disease is pain for an extended period of time, it is vital for the patient for the doctor to quickly and correctly diagnose this. However, doctors primarily look for fibromyalgia in middle-aged women and may not think that others could have it. Most likely, they will diagnose this incorrectly as a case of lupus, but these two diseases have different treatments. 

Contact a Tulsa Personal Injury Lawyer

The Tulsa personal injury lawyers at Wandres Law bring a unique perspective to your medical malpractice case. When you have been injured because a doctor has negligently failed to properly diagnose your symptoms, you may be entitled to financial compensation. Contact us online or call us at (918) 641-4044 to set up your free initial consultation.