What Can I Do If My Doctor Failed to Diagnose My Stroke?

Strokes are a serious problem in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control (the CDC), more than 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke every year. More than 140,000 people are killed by strokes every year. While the personal cost to those who suffer stroke and their families is always the highest, the American Heart Association estimates strokes cost the United States more than $34 billion each year. Strokes can lead to devastating injuries or death, and early treatment is the key to minimizing your injuries.

Unfortunately, despite the importance of early intervention, many medical providers fail to properly diagnose strokes. Sometimes, a doctor may misread the patient’s symptoms and diagnose the patient with another medical problem, resulting in a misdiagnosis of a stroke. Other times, the doctor may miss the symptoms entirely and incorrectly give the patient a clean bill of health, resulting in a failure to diagnose the stroke. Because early intervention is so important to increasing a stroke victim’s chances of surviving or limiting the amount of permanent damage from the stroke, failure to make a prompt and proper diagnosis wastes valuable time during which stroke can cause devastating injuries.

What Are The Symptoms My Medical Provider Should Be Looking For?

There are two different kinds of strokes:

-   Ischemic Strokes: According to the Geisinger Medical Center, these strokes occur when a blood clot or other substance blocks a blood vessel. The blockage prevents the blood from circulating properly and may cut off the supply to vital organs like the brain or the lungs. These strokes may also be transient in nature, meaning the blockage only lasts a short time. These “mini-strokes” are important warning signs that future strokes are likely to occur and must be diagnosed promptly.

-   Hemorrhagic Stroke: According to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, these strokes occur when a blood vessel in the brain bursts or ruptures, causing blood to leak onto the surrounding brain tissue.

According to the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, the symptoms of a stroke can include:

-   Sudden numbness or weakness in your face, legs, and arms, especially if it occurs on only one side of the body;

-   Sudden trouble speaking or understanding things;

-   Sudden vision problems, such as loss of vision in one or both eyes;

-   A sudden episode of dizziness or loss of balance; and

-   A sudden, severe headache with no known cause.

How Can A Medical Provider Fail To Diagnose A Stroke?

There are many kinds of negligence that can lead to a failure to diagnose a stroke, including:

-   Failing To Take A Proper Medical History: Many conditions that lead to a stroke, such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, are rooted in genetics. Medical providers sometimes fail to obtain a proper and thorough medical history that includes whether any relatives have had strokes or medical issues that can lead to a stroke. This may cause the medical provider to fail watch for and recognize symptoms of a stroke in a patient. Medical providers may also fail to follow up with their patients when they do report potential symptoms of a stroke to ensure additional symptoms have not developed.

-   Failure to Order Appropriate Testing: Due to rapid developments in technology over the years, highly advanced tests are now available to assist medical providers in diagnosing strokes. According to an article in the Washington Post, recent developments in Brain Imaging could double the time medical providers have to treat and save their clients. Unfortunately, some providers fail to order these tests and other simply have not invested in the right technology.

-   Incorrect Readings and interpretations of Diagnostic Tests: Many times, a misdiagnosis may be due to the simple fact the radiologist or doctor misreads a diagnostic test. The medical provider may miss a blockage in a blood vessel or fail to recognize a bleed on the brain. Other times, the medical provider reviewing the test results may interpret the results incorrectly, leading the provider to determine the results point to inflammation or disease.

No matter why the medical provider fails to diagnose a stroke, these failures delay treatment in a situation where every minute counts. A failure to treat a stroke can lead to catastrophic injuries, including:

-   Partial paralysis in the face, arms or legs;

-   Permanent brain damage and cognitive deficits;

-   Permanent partial or total loss of vision;

-   Chronic fatigue;

-   Dysphagia (chronic difficulty in swallowing);

-   Incontinence; and

-   Death

What Should I Do If My Doctor Has Failed to Diagnose A Stroke?

You need to contact an experienced attorney immediately. DO NOT DELAY! A failure to diagnose a stroke is generally due to medical malpractice or medical negligence. There is a Statute of Limitations in Pennsylvania that generally requires any medical malpractice lawsuit to be started within two (2) years of the medical malpractice or medical negligence which has caused your injuries. 

If you do not bring a lawsuit within the applicable two-year period, any claim that you may have will be forever barred. There are certain situations where the Statute of Limitations will be extended, but determining whether your case meet the requirements for an extension is extremely complicated. You will need an experienced attorney to review your case to see if it qualifies.

Like all medical malpractice cases, failures to diagnose strokes are often much more complicated than other kinds of personal injury cases. Your attorney will often have to gather thousands of pages of medical records and have them reviewed by experts to determine whether the provider that failed to diagnose your stroke is guilty of medical malpractice or medical negligence. 

You need an experienced attorney with access to the experts who can review the facts of your case to determine what kinds of claims you may make. Second, medical malpractice cases are often high-stakes cases that are heavily litigated and notoriously expensive. You need an attorney with the resources and perseverance to take your case all the way to trial if necessary.

At the Law Office of Alvin F. de Levie, Esq., our team has years of experience handling complex cases for those who have suffered from medical malpractice and medical negligence. We have handled cases from Philadelphia and the surrounding counties to Allegheny County, including Blair County, Centre County, Lycoming County, Montour County, Mifflin County, Cambria County, Cumberland County and Dauphin County. If you or a loved one have suffered injury due to a medical provider’s failure to diagnose a stroke, please call our firm – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – at 844-777-2529 (Toll-Free) for a consultation. One of our team members will be in immediate contact with you. All conversations are completely confidential. We maintain offices throughout Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, State College, Bellefonte and Lock Haven, and we are willing to meet any clients throughout the Commonwealth.

As mentioned in the testimonials on our site, we are always available for our clients, whether in person, over the phone, via text or via email. We travel throughout Pennsylvania and we make it a priority to answer our clients' questions and to keep them informed of important developments in their cases.