Kent Failure-to-Diagnose Attorney

Helping You Hold Negligent Medical Professionals Accountable

Medical malpractice does not always take the form of wrongful action. In fact, negligent inaction serves as the basis for most medical malpractice claims. Among the most common of these are claims involving failure to diagnose.

When doctors, nurses, and other medical practitioners fail to quickly and correctly diagnose an illness, injury, or condition, patients suffer. Without a proper diagnosis, you cannot receive proper treatment. This can lead to additional complications and injuries and, in severe cases, death.

Proving that a medical professional was negligent in failing to diagnose your condition is difficult, however. It’s not enough to simply show that you didn’t receive the right diagnosis the first time you visited your doctor/the hospital; instead, you must show that the medical practitioners involved failed to meet the standard of care.

Failure to Diagnose Aneurysms

An aneurysm is a swelling or ballooning of a vessel that can occur if the blood vessel is damaged or weakened. As blood pressure increases or time passes, the blood vessel can balloon outwards at the damaged or weakened spot. If pressure continues, the blood vessel can rupture, which can result in hemorrhaging (bleeding). If the hemorrhage is severe, stroke or death may result.

An aneurysm can occur suddenly, or it can evolve over time. An aneurysm can occur without any warning and can cause long-lasting physical problems. Doctors should be able to accurately diagnose the signs and symptoms of an aneurysm even though they share many of the same symptoms of other conditions. Too often, patients being treated for hypertension or high blood pressure have an aneurysm.

In cases involving failure to diagnose an aneurysm, it’s important to understand the symptoms that the patient was having at the time the patient saw the doctor or healthcare provider. To understand these symptoms, we need to review the medical charts of the patient, as well as understand what conversations, examinations, and testing transpired.

Once this information is known, it’s then possible to assess whether the proper treatment was rendered, or whether the doctor or healthcare provider was negligent in failing to diagnose a developing aneurysm. To makes this assessment, we typically hire physicians or medical experts to review the symptoms that were presented and to review the actions taken by the doctor or healthcare provider to determine whether these actions were appropriate given the circumstances.

In order to prove medical malpractice, it must be shown that the doctor or healthcare provider failed to comply with or meet the standard of care that a competent doctor or healthcare professional would have provided under the same circumstances, and that such failure caused harm.