Background
Each year about 5 million people in the United States visit emergency rooms with heart attack symptoms, including chest pains. Since heart attack symptoms are similar to a number of common on-life threatening conditions, physicians may fail to realize the severity of the patient's situation and may even misdiagnose the patient's medical condition.
Three (3) of the more common mistakes made during the diagnosis of a heart attack include:
(1) Relying on a regular ECG to gauge the presence or lack of a heart attack. Some studies have shown that a significant number of misdiagnosed heart attacks occur due to improper reading of a patient's ECG.
(2) Many younger patients suffer heart attacks that remain undiagnosed.
(3) At least 2% of heart attacks may be incorrectly diagnosed by medical professionals. And, women may be at least seven or eight times more likely to have their heart attack misdiagnosed than men.
New York Jury Awards $126,600,000.00 for failure by medical staff to diagnose heart attack:
A New York woman who claims she sat unattended in a New York hospital for hours while medical personnel negligently failed to diagnose her heart attack has won a $126.6 million jury verdict.
The woman, an office manager and former horse trainer, claimed she suffered permanent injuries after the medical staff of the Hospital failed to recognize she was having a heart attack.
"In a nutshell, the jury didn't believe the hospital's expert, and awarded her damages for pain and suffering and her tremendous future medical expenses," said the woman's malpractice attorney.
[see, New England Journal of Medicine/ "Heart Attack Misdiagnosis"; Lawyersusaonline.com/ 10/18/2012; dailyalert_USA@lawyersweekly.com/ 10-18-2012/ "Jury Awards $126.6 Million For Failure To Diagnose Heart Attack"]
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