To avoid medical malpractice, sometimes you need to be your own advocate.

By Ben Gobel on January 1, 2020

One of the most common types of medical malpractice involves the failure of a medical provider to timely diagnose and treat a patient’s heart disease.

Heart disease generally refers to conditions that involve narrowed or blocked blood vessels, also known as “coronary arteriosclerosis” or “coronary artery disease,” which can lead to a heart attack or stroke. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, claiming approximately 647,000 lives in 2018 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  That means that one in every four deaths in this country are attributable to heart disease.  

Symptoms of heart disease can include pain or tightness in the chest, shortness of breath, and lightheadedness. In laymen’s terms, these symptoms are the body’s way of warning us that certain organs may not be receiving enough oxygen and/or blood due to a blockage of the coronary arteries. Unfortunately, I hear from individuals and their families every week about situations where a medical provider overlooked or failed to properly evaluate these symptoms. This often results in someone suffering a heart attack or a stroke that could have been avoided.

If heart disease is properly diagnosed, treatments such as medications, stents, bypasses, and pacemakers are extremely effective at controlling and treating the disease. These treatments, coupled with lifestyle changes (e.g., quitting smoking, following a healthy diet, and exercising), help to significantly reduce the risk of heart disease progressing to a heart attack or stroke.

While we are fortunate to live in a time when effective treatments for heart disease are available, it is incumbent upon medical providers to first diagnose the condition. When they fail to do so timely and appropriately, that is medical malpractice.

Every failure to diagnose case contains complicated factual, legal, and medical issues. Because of this, it is important that you discuss your case with an experienced medical malpractice attorney as soon as possible.  Call one of our experienced medical malpractice lawyers at Ogg, Murphy & Perkosky anytime at (412) 471-8500, or send us a message through this page. The attorneys at Ogg, Murphy & Perkosky have recovered over $100,000,000 dollars on behalf of our clients and their families who were the victims of medical malpractice.  Call us now. We are almost always available and there is never a fee unless we make a financial recovery for you.