Types of Medical Malpractice Cases Our Team Handles

There are many different ways in which a medical professional or healthcare facility can deliver inadequate patient care and commit medical malpractice.

Surgical Errors

Surgical mistakes can include the following:

• Performing an operation incorrectly
• Leaving a foreign object, like a surgical clamp, inside the patient
• Failing to properly and safely provide anesthesia during surgery
• Performing a surgery or continuing to proceed with surgery when it is not safe
• Removing the wrong organ, such as the left ovary instead of the right ovary
• Performing the wrong operation, such as a hysterectomy on a patient who was having surgery for gallstones
• Not performing a biopsy on suspicious tissue discovered during an operation

Failure to Diagnose

If a patient sees a doctor complaining of symptoms indicative of a diseased condition, but the doctor does not run the proper tests or fails to refer to the appropriate specialist, you might have a claim for failure to diagnose if you suffered injuries or complications due to the failure to diagnose. This type of medical malpractice sometimes happens in patients with undiagnosed cancer. By the time the patient goes to a different doctor and receives the diagnosis of a malignancy, the disease has progressed to a later stage with a lower survival rate.

Misdiagnosis

In this situation a doctor diagnoses a minor condition when the actual condition is much more serious and the patient is treated for the non-existent condition for a lengthy period of time. In the meantime, the actual condition becomes much worse and the patient’s chance for cure and recovery is lost or diminished. An example of this is a patient being treated for a muscle strain when they actually have a cancerous tumor If treated much earlier, the patient might have had a chance of surgical cure or remission, but because of the misdiagnosis, the patient faces a grim prognosis. This patient would have the right to pursue a medical malpractice claim.

Wrong Treatment

It is malpractice when a doctor prescribes a medication that is harmful to the patient when such possibility was known or should have been known. For example, when a doctor prescribes a drug to a patient who is allergic to the medication and the information was contained in the patient’s medical chart, but the doctor did not check that section of the record before prescribing the medication. If the patient has a fatal reaction to the prescribed drug and dies, the patient’s family would have the basis for a wrongful death claim.

Not Disclosing Known Risks

Before a physician performs a medical procedure on a patient, the doctor must explain known risks and complications to the patient. The patient needs this information to make an informed decision about whether to undergo a procedure or not. Without this data, the patient cannot give informed consent. It can be malpractice if the patient experiences the complication of the unexplained risk and is injured because of it.

There are many other types of cases that we handle. These are only some examples of the many ways that healthcare professionals can harm people through negligence.