Most patients do not have any background in medicine and even one’s that do, usually blindly rely on a doctor’s diagnosis and suggested treatment when confronted with a medical problem.  But what happens when the doctors get it wrong?  What happens when they miss a diagnosis and fail to provide necessary treatment?
    
The unfortunate instance of a woman in Jacksonville, Florida illustrates what can happen.  The woman went to the hospital (where she coincidentally works as a nurse) suffering from fever, aches, and a racing heart but was sent away with only pain medications.  Her attorney’s allege that the doctors failed to notice a textbook case of sepsis. Sepsis is a system-wide infection that if not timely treated can result in massive infection and often death.
 
Six-hours later, a test result came back indicating a strep infection so the woman was called back to the hospital.  Ultimately, the woman’s flesh began to die and she had to have her legs removed in order to save her life.
    
If there were signs of sepsis when the woman first went to the hospital, immediate treatment could have saved her legs.  Not having made this initial diagnosis, the woman’s condition worsened over several hours to a point beyond full recovery.  At the very least, the woman was able to keep her life.
    
Whether or not this woman’s condition could have been diagnosed in her initial visit will be worked out in court.  However, her unfortunate situation provides a lesson to the rest of us that misdiagnosis happens more frequently then we may think and can have life altering consequences.

To learn more about how these cases work, I encourage you to explore my website http://www.oginski-law.com. If you have legal questions, and I urge you to pick up the phone and call me at 516-487-8207 or by e-mail at [email protected]. I welcome your call.
Gerry Oginski
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NY Medical Malpractice & Personal Injury Trial Lawyer
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Ron 04/10/2013 01:10 PM
I live in Tennessee. Last november I had a pacemaker replacement. A little over 2 weeks later, my heart started racing, I started a fever and the area around the pacemaker insertion became swollen, red and had blisters. I went to the surgeon's office. He said that he had never seen anything like this and sent me to the cardiologists across the hall. He looked at the area and did NO tests. He said that the swelling was just muscles and would NOT affect my heart and to go home, I would be fine. A couple of days later I went to the ER. The test results showed that I had Severe Sepsis. My kidneys had quit. My liver had quit and my lungs was failing. I was transferred to the ICU where I stayed for 3 weeks, which 1 1/2 was on a ventilator. I went into a coma. I wonder, had the cardiologists or surgeon tested me the day I had went to their office if the coma and results could have been avoided.
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