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Heart Conditions

Fort Smith and Lowell, AR - Tulsa and Oklahoma City, OK.

We may be able to help you concerning if a heart condition was misdiagnosed or mistreated. Serious heart conditions can cause devastating injuries or death. However, the damage they create can be avoided or minimized if properly diagnosed and treated. Because heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States, the identification of heart problems must be at the top of the radar screen for physicians.  Physicians generally do a good job of finding heart related problems. Unfortunately, some patients with an acute heart conditions are sent home from the emergency room, doubling their mortality compared to those admitted.  Approximately 2% to 8% of patients with serious heart conditions who present to the emergency department are discharged without the condition being identified. Women are at a particularly high risk of misdiagnosis, especially those younger than 55 years. Factors identified with misdiagnosis of heart related problems include physicians with less emergency room experience who had a tendency to document histories less clearly, admitted fewer patients to the hospital and had difficulty with ECG interpretation.

Our firm can help you if a heart condition was misdiagnosed or mistreated because of the failure of a physician or health care provider to meet the required standard of care. In diagnosing or treating heart conditions, general practitioner physicians must use their best judgment and apply with ordinary care and diligence the knowledge and skill that is possessed and used by members of their profession. Specialists must use their best judgment and apply with ordinary care and diligence the knowledge and skill that is possessed and used by other specialists.  This is a higher degree of knowledge and skill than that of a general practitioner. Physicians do not guarantee a cure and are not responsible for the lack of success unless that lack results from their failure to exercise ordinary care or from their lack of knowledge and skill.

The damages caused by the negligent failure to diagnose or treat a heart condition can be substantial. Our firm can arrange for physicians to provide expert testimony about what the proper standard of care is and, in the case of a negligent physician or provider, how the provider’s services did not meet that standard. We provide economists to testify about the loss of income and services. We also provide other experts, such as life care planners, who can testify about the cost of goods and services that will be needed to care for a person who survives a heart attack.

 

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