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The failure to diagnose a condition is one of the most significant causes of medical malpractice lawsuits against doctors and hospitals in the United States.
Often in these cases a failure to diagnose or a misdiagnosis, can prove fatal for a patient. Sadly this was the case in a lawsuit in the Harrisonburg area of Virginia in which a doctor failed to pick up on one of the signs of bladder cancer.
Virginia Lawyers Weekly reported oh how a 72-year-old man visited his family doctor on three occasions, complaining of blood in his urine (hematuria). On each occasion the doctor diagnosed a urinary tract infection or a trauma from a kidney stone.
However, gross hematuria is a well-known indicator of bladder cancer that doctors must rule out. The patient asked for a referral to a urologist after his third visit. The urologist quickly diagnosed bladder cancer.
Although the patient’s bladder was removed, the year long delay proved to be costly. The patient was in remission for 18 months but later studies pointed to the presence of terminal metastasis from bladder cancer.
A wrongful death case was later settled for $750,000. The attorney for the plaintiff was Frank Hilton.I see far too many cases in Virginia of a failure of a doctor to diagnose a serious and life-threatening condition. Last year I reported on how patients who have been harmed by medical malpractice in Virginia can now benefit from some extensions in the time they are given to file a personal injury lawsuit.
A recently enacted amendment to state legislation provides extensions in the time available in certain conditions to the two year time limit to file a lawsuit. This change could be helpful for some patients in cases in which a doctor has made a mistake and missed a health condition.
If a failure to diagnose a condition has led to a serious or fatal escalation, you may have grounds to file a medical malpractice lawsuit. Call Cooper Hurley at 757.455.0077 or see Cooperhurley.com.