New York City Medical Malpractice Lawyers Pin Down Diagnoses Lapses

There’s a clear danger of what a misdiagnosis can do to patients who may be carrying signs of potential debilitation, like a stroke. The doctor who made the bad call should be held accountable if the evidence fits. Last April 5, 2014, Linda Poon of National Public Radio wrote:

Stroke symptoms can be so tricky to spot that sometimes, even emergency room doctors get it wrong.
 
A study from Johns Hopkins University suggests that ER doctors may be up to 30 percent more likely to overlook signs of stroke in women and minorities. And for patients under 45, the odds are much greater than for those who are older.
 
“Younger people are less likely to have a stroke, but when they have that stroke, they’re much more likely to be missed,” says Dr. David Newman-Toker, a neurologist at Johns Hopkins and the study’s lead author.

The above may be too hard to overlook among residents of the Big Apple and New York State in general. The state already boasts the nation’s lowest stroke mortality rate, with just 9.3% at stroke centers in NYC and 12.2% in upstate facilities. Tight regulations on stroke treatment and effective administering of anti-clotting medication were the main attributes.

However, despite the glowing data, anyone can still get a stroke. Some medical practitioners doing a checkup on you can still read the data wrong and diagnose a potential stroke as something else. When this happens and you or a loved one suffers painfully, you need skilled New York City medical malpractice lawyers like those from The Law Offices of Joseph M. Lichtenstein to help you seek justice.

The conclusion was reached in an analysis of diagnoses and emergency visits of 200,000 patients in over 1,000 hospitals during 2008 and 2009. Around 13% of the patients complained of headaches and dizziness but were diagnosed with inner-ear conditions or migraine then sent home. The fact that they had an appointment with the doctor less than two days later when a stroke was underway only indicated that the initial symptoms were a “precursor to a more severe stroke,” Poon quoted Dr. Newman-Toker as saying.

Full access to a patient’s medical history and determining their connections to a stroke misdiagnosis may be vital to cases filed on errant practitioners. Newman-Toker said up to five percent of patients reporting dizziness contracted a stroke, but the stroke itself and how frequently certain symptoms were diagnosed could not be passed off as coincidental.

Anyone, even youngsters in their prime, can suffer worse fates upon contracting a stroke regardless of severity. A capable New York City medical malpractice attorney will fight for your rights.

(Source: Emergency Docs More Likely To Miss Signs Of Stroke In The Young, NPR, 5 April 2014)