Commonly Missed Diagnoses

In many cases, the timely diagnosis of an illness is crucial to saving the life of a patient. But an accurate diagnosis is always vital to enabling an appropriate course of treatment. When doctors fail to correctly interpret the signs, symptoms, and test results or miss a condition altogether, the health consequences can be horrendous. Such failures are a common example of medical malpractice and despite the fact that there are some diseases that are frequently missed during the diagnostic phase physicians are slow to develop strategies to prevent those same mistakes from occurring again.

If you or your loved one has had to cope with the worsening of a progressive illness or the lack of treatment for an undiagnosed disease, we can help you to gain the financial compensation to which you are entitled. Contact the Pennsylvania medical malpractice lawyers of Lowenthal & Abrams, P.C, at 610-667-7511.

Too Frequent Errors

It would seem like a natural response for doctors to remain on alert for diseases that are commonly missed or wrongly diagnosed, but habits that lead them down other paths act as an impediment to this heightened awareness. This places patients at risk, and it would behoove both patients and physicians to have an active familiarity with these frequently missed diagnoses:

• Congenital Heart Disease – as many as 1.2 % of babies are born with heart defects, and 20% of those children may have the condition missed entirely
• Cancer – with so many symptoms and so many different variants, cancer diagnosis remains a challenge
• Depression and Bipolar Disorder – failure to note psychological disorders can have severe consequences as untreated patients may hurt themselves or others

Contact Us

If your family has been affected by these or other missed diagnoses, contact the Pennsylvania medical malpractice attorneys of Lowenthal & Abrams, P.C. at 610-667-7511.