Articles Posted in Delay to Treat or Failure to Diagnose a Medical Condition

Often doctors fail to diagnose common variable immune deficiency (CVID). It takes an average of 6 years for patients to receive a correct CVID diagnosis because it is a rare form of immune deficiency that mimics other diseases and causes a variety of disparate ailments. In a recent article in the Washington Post, Sandra G. Boodman describes the case of a woman who was submitted to numerous tests before being properly diagnosed with CVID. The woman’s oldest brother who is also a physician was diagnosed earlier with the same disorder and she kept telling the doctors and nurses about it but no one listened to her. Finally she was able to arrange a phone call between her brother and her hematologist. The hematologist listened to the brother because he was a doctor and then things started to move in the right direction. She started to receive infusions, the only way to treat CVID and the platelet count started to increase. After a few months she was in remission. She then saw two specialists who confirmed she had CVID a condition that so far has no cure and requires painful monthly infusions.

A 30 year old patient who checked in last Sunday night at 10PM at St Barnabas Emergency Room for a rash was found dead in a waiting room chair at 6:40 the next morning by a security guard. According to an ER employee, there is no policy in place to check the waiting room to see if people who are waiting to be seen are still there or are still alive. The employee added that the man had been dead for several hours before he was found.

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Delay in treatment can be medical malpractice click here to learn more about it.

Failure to diagnose a brain tumor can have horrible consequences on the life of an individual. In a recent article in the Washington Post, Sandra G. Boodman writes about the dramatic story of Bebe Bahnsen, an outgoing and successful Washington newspaper reporter whose life was destroyed because doctors failed to diagnose a growing brain tumor that was pressing on her left frontal lobe, the portion of the brain responsible for speech, movement, emotional regulation and reasoning. Symptoms started with mild depression and as the tumor grew Bebe sustained a prolonged suicidal depression. Her social life and career were totally destroyed. For years she was hospitalized periodically, submitted to electroshock treatments, and prescribed numerous psychiatric drugs until finally a neurologist did the right thing. Dr Gawronski, now practicing in Baton Rouge, ordered an MRI and realized that a small benign brain tumor that had been previously diagnosed years before had reached the size of a lime and was the reason for her worsening mental illness.

Failure to diagnose May-Thurner Syndrome may be medical malpractice that can lead to post-thrombotic syndrome, potentially fatal pulmonary embolism, pulmonary hypertension, and in the worst case paradoxical embolism.

In a recent article published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants, the author Jaclyn Leitner who practice general medicine in Newark, New Jersey describes the case of a 28 year old female marathon runner who visited her office with groin pain. The author explains how to properly diagnose May-Thurner syndrome and the available treatments.