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Misdiagnosis
Various medical diseases are linked to medical malpractice. Your physician may overlook some of your symptoms. Misdiagnosis usually occurs at three levels:
- Patient: Sometimes patients do not tell the doctor all their symptoms. They might assume that it is irrelevant. Always tell the doctor everything, no matter how unimportant it seems to you. At other times, patients do not get the tests that are ordered by the doctor. It may be due to pure laziness, or due to the difficulty of getting a test done.
- Doctor: Doctors are only aware of the most common diseases. They are usually not able to make rare or unusual diagnoses. Often, doctors don’t order some tests. This may be because they don’t want you to make” unnecessary” expenditure. Also, your doctor may be in a hurry. In such a case, he might miss something crucial.
- Diagnostic Tests: There may be errors in your lab reports. Or your doctor may be misguided by false positive or negative readings.
The top five malpractice-risk conditions in order of prevalence are myocardial infarction, breast cancer, appendicitis, lung cancer and colon cancer. Almost all malpractice suits are related to misdiagnosis leading to wrong or delayed treatment.
There are some diseases that are diagnosed very often. These are:
- Sinusitis: It may be confused with common cold or asthma.
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome: Other causes of digestive disorder may be overlooked.
- Middle ear infection, mostly in children.
Some diseases are under diagnosed. These are:
- Depression
- Sexually transmitted diseases
- Celiac Disease may be overlooked as a cause of digestive problems.
For More information about malpractice, you can contact St. Louis malpractice lawyer
