MEDICAL COMPENSATION CLAIMS

Misdiagnosis

Misdiagnosis is a common occurrence frequently resulting in medical compensation claims. Estimates of the problem range from over 1% of cancer biopsies to over 30% of accident and emergency admissions in a busy hospital. Estimates vary however studies indicate that perhaps as many as 15% of patients overall are initially misdiagnosed. It is extremely important for a patient to have an accurate diagnosis and in life threatening situations it is prudent for any diagnosis to be confirmed as soon as possible usually by seeing a specialist, obtaining a second opinion or by further laboratory testing.

Most Common Type of Case

A large proportion of medical compensation claims are based on misdiagnosis or delayed treatment of serious conditions including myocardial infarction, breast cancer, appendicitis, lung cancer, colon cancer and sub arachnoid haemorrhage. The high rates of misdiagnosis in the accident and emergency department of a busy city hospital are usually due to the time constraints for diagnosis and treatment and the availability of specialist staff at any time. Cancer misdiagnosis is usually due to an error in the scientific testing of a biopsy sample. Cancer cells require identification of abnormal cells on a pathology slide by a technician which, due to human frailty, has an inherent built in risk of human error.

Contributing Factors

Errors in diagnosis can be due to a number of factors and contributors to any clinical mistake can include the patient, the general practitioner, the specialist and any laboratory technicians involved in the testing of samples:-

Patients can contribute to the misdiagnosis of their own illness by failing to tell the health care providers about all of their symptoms. Some patients fail to attend appointments for diagnostic tests.

General practitioners are not specialists and even specialists may miss the signs and symptoms of an uncommon illness or may notice the symptoms but attribute them to a more common illness with which they are more familiar.

Types of Misdiagnosis

Not all misdiagnosis is the same, however all may result in a medical compensation claim. There are a number of common types of misdiagnosis ranging from a totally wrong diagnosis to partial misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, identification of the wrong subtype of a disease, failure to diagnose complications associated with a diagnosed disease, failure to diagnose an underlying disease which has caused a diagnosed disease, failure to diagnose a disease related to a diagnosed disease, failure to diagnose a disease caused by medication used to treat another disease.

Specialist Lawyers

We represent a network of specialist medical negligence lawyers operating throughout the United Kingdom. In England and Wales our solicitors are all members of the Law Society clinical negligence panel and are franchised to make an application for legal aid. Less than 1% of UK solicitors are clinical negligence specialists. If you would like to talk to an expert lawyer just complete the contact form and a solicitor will phone you to give free advice without any further obligation whatsoever.