According to the CDC, more than 795,000 people in the United States experience a stroke each year, making it one of the leading causes of death. As common as they are, with one person dying of a stroke every 3.5 minutes, many patients go undiagnosed.
If a medical professional fails to diagnose your client or their loved one with a stroke, leading to a poor health outcome, they may have a strong foundation for a medical malpractice case. However, the following scenarios might indicate that some cases are stronger than others.
Failure to Notice Stroke Symptoms
When you’re a medical malpractice lawyer working for a legal team like The Tinker Law Firm PLLC, you can ask a client seeking to file a medical malpractice claim whether or not medical professionals noticed their stroke symptoms.
Many noticeable symptoms are associated with strokes, such as facial, arm, and leg weakness and numbness, severe headache, confusion, and difficulty seeing and walking. Many people also experience speech challenges, a loss of balance, and dizziness. If these symptoms were present and a medical professional didn’t diagnose a stroke, your client might have a strong case.
No Full Physical Examination
Not all stroke victims will experience all symptoms, especially since there are so many different stroke types. However, since research has found that early diagnosis and treatment can improve patient outcomes, taking even a few symptoms seriously can be crucial.
Your client might be successful in their claim if it’s determined that a medical professional didn’t perform a complete physical examination. This exam might include checking vital signs, a speech and visual field assessment, and orientation.
Ignoring Risk Factors
Some people are more at risk of having a stroke than others, and not all risk factors will be immediately evident during an examination in a medical setting. However, some risk factors cannot be denied, such as a history of strokes, older age, cardiac abnormalities, and abnormal heart rhythm.
Some people’s lifestyles also put them at a higher risk, such as obesity, IV drug abuse, heart disease, and diabetes. Not considering the possibility of a stroke with such risk factors might allow your law firm to see potential in your client’s case.
Diagnosing Another Condition
Many conditions can look similar to a stroke on a surface level, such as seizures, migraine, low or high blood pressure, and even brain tumors. However, fixating on other diagnoses rather than considering alternative conditions, such as a stroke, can be dangerous for a patient when time is of the essence. While doctors must consider all possibilities, not factoring in stroke as a possible one might give your client reason enough to file a medical malpractice claim.
Testing Errors
Many medical professionals can be involved in a patient’s care, and sometimes, important information can fall through the cracks. Long-term effects of a stroke might be much worse for a patient if test results are read wrong, there are laboratory errors or delays, or a medical professional fails to order necessary tests to determine a diagnosis.
Failure to act quickly with a stroke diagnosis can be a matter of life or death. When your client describes any of these scenarios above, there’s potential for them to have a strong stroke misdiagnosis case that you can bring to a successful conclusion.
