
Types of Diagnosis Errors
Diagnosis error suits basically include two different types: misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis. Both these occurrences can have adverse and even life-threatening effects on the patient and call for aggressive legal action if further injury or sickness is inflicted.
The two prominent types of diagnosis errors include:
Misdiagnosis: this occurs when a doctor believes that a patient has a condition that they actually do not have. Not only can patients then be subject to treatment or surgeries they do not need, but their actual ailment is then allowed to advance and further endanger their health.
Delayed diagnosis: this occurs when a patient exhibits telltale signs of a particular ailment but does not receive treatment due to their doctor’s inability or refusal to identify the ailment. By the time a proper diagnosis is reached, the patient has often unnecessarily suffered due to the untreated (or undertreated) ailment.
In both cases, it is crucial that plaintiffs can demonstrate that their medical treatment would have been handled differently (and correctly) by other doctors.