Misdiagnosed or undiagnosed claims
Medical professionals can make mistakes and unfortunately a missed or wrong diagnosis can have a life-changing impact on you or a loved-one. Sometimes the consequences can be devastating and you will need specialist Clinical Negligence solicitors to help and support you and your family.
Medical professionals can make mistakes and unfortunately a missed or wrong diagnosis can have a huge impact on you or a loved-one’s quality of life. Sometimes the resulting illness or injury can be devastating.
It is only human to want to find answers and make sense of what has happened to you or a loved-one. In our experience, people come to us for our clinical negligence expertise because then need to know what went wrong and to make sure it does not happen to someone else. In many cases they feel ignored and frustrated that they can’t get to the bottom of what happened, and that is where we come in. People just want us to get answers and to know that lessons have been learnt.
In those circumstances you or a family member will also need help getting better and to move on to live the best life possible. The purpose of compensation is to help and support the injured party to return to the position, or as close to as possible, that they would have been in had the medical misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose not taken place.
A clinical negligence claim for compensation can be made for a misdiagnosed or an undiagnosed illness or injury if the action or omissions of a medical professional leads directly to additional illness or injury.
Medical misdiagnosis
In these sorts of cases a GP, A&E doctor or other medical professional makes an incorrect diagnosis that results in further injury or illness to the patient, or in some extreme cases leads to death. Examples can include when a medical professional diagnoses a sprained ankle when in fact the ankle bone is fractured or a heart attack is diagnosed as a panic attack or heartburn.
Birchall Blackburn Law’s clinical negligence team have experience in dealing with many types of complicated misdiagnosis cases, but the most common examples include:
– Concussion and head injury misdiagnosis
– Meningitis misdiagnosis
– Failure or delay in diagnosing sepsis
– Broken or fractured bone misdiagnosis
– Tendon injury misdiagnosis
– Heart attack or stroke misdiagnosis
– Spinal compression injury misdiagnosis (e.g. cauda equina)
Failure to diagnose
In some circumstances a condition or illness can be completely missed and go undiagnosed by a medical professional. Birchall Blackburn Law’s specialist clinical negligence solicitors have dealt with cases where a patient has visited their GP over many years with a variety of health issues and the doctor has failed to recognise and diagnose a condition.
Not only can this delay treatment while the condition gets increasingly worse but for many years it will impact on the quality of you or a loved-one’s life. There will be a physical and practical impact but also a psychological impact as you or a family member spends years worrying about what is wrong.
What do I do next if I or a loved-one has been misdiagnosed or undiagnosed?
If you suspect that a medical professionals should have diagnosed your condition but failed to do so then it is important to seek legal advice as soon as possible.
A specialist Medical Negligence solicitor with plenty of experience in these sorts of case will be happy to talk to you in the first instance about what has happened to you and whether you will be able to claim compensation.
Birchall Blackburn Law has decades of experience supporting people who have been misdiagnosed or undiagnosed. You can simply email or calls us and we will give you initial free and confidential advice about claiming compensation, with no obligations.