Failure to Diagnose Heart Attack

FAILURE TO DIAGNOSE HEART ATTACKS LAWYER: Attorney Fred Pritzker has extensive medical malpractice experience. In recognition of his accomplishments, he has been included in The Best Lawyers in America. If you have suffered harm associated with a failure to diagnose heart attack, contact malpractice lawyer Fred Pritzker for a free consultation. You may reach him toll-free at 1-888-377-8900 or submit the Pritzker | Ruohonen online consultation form for his review.

Failure to Diagnose Heart Attacks
Each year, 7 million people come to hospital emergency rooms (ER) complaining of chest pain or discomfort that suggest they might be having a heart attack. Approximately 26,000 patients with acute cardiac ischemia (ACI) are mistakenly discharged from ERs each year, despite the abundance of knowledge available about ACI. If you or a family member has suffered serious harm due to failure to diagnose a heart attack, you need a medical malpractice lawyer with experience.

Failure to Diagnose Heart Attacks Data
Acute cardiac ischemia (ACI) is a deficiency in blood supply to the heart muscle. ACI includes heart attack and unstable angina pectoris that can lead to heart attack. These conditions continue to be among the most difficult to predict or diagnose for even the most experienced physicians. Failure to diagnose heart attacks may lead to subsequent discharge of patients with acute cardiac ischemia, who should have been admitted. Patients who are mistakenly not admitted to the hospital have nearly twice the risk of dying as patients who are properly diagnosed and admitted.

Symptoms of a Heart Attack
It is not always easy to tell if someone is having a heart attack. Heart attacks can occur in men or women, and many start slowly as mild pain or discomfort. You may not be sure what's wrong, and your symptoms may come and go. Even if you've already had one heart attack, you may not recognize symptoms of another because they may be entirely different. Therefore, it's vital that you learn the warning signs of a heart attack. They are:

Chest discomfort (e.g., pressure, squeezing, fullness, or pain) in the center of the chest that lasts for more than a few minutes, or goes away and comes back.
Shortness of breath, which often occurs at the same time as, but can occur before, chest discomfort.
Discomfort in other areas of the upper body (e.g., in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw, or stomach).
Other symptoms such as breaking out in a cold sweat, nausea, or light-headedness.

Medical Industry changes that would minimize Failure to Diagnose Heart Attack
Physicians and ER staff who have available and properly use the following technologies, within the first hour of a suspected heart attack, give the patient a much greater chance for survival and full recovery:

Acute cardiac ischemia time-insensitive predictive instrument software (ACI-TIPI): When ACI-TIPI is run simultaneously with conventional computerized electrocardiograph, it decreases the number of failure to diagnose heart attacks and prevents many unnecessary hospitalizations. In a recent study of the effectiveness of ACI-TIPI in the emergency room, failure to diagnose heart attack dropped from 31% all the way down to 2.2%.
Thrombolytic [blood-clot-dissolving] therapy: When thrombolytic therapy is done in the first hour after a heart attack, the likelihood of survival increases significantly.
Cardiac sestamibi scan: A sestamibi scan is a non-invasive, imaging test. The patient is injected with a radioactive compound technetium, bound to the chemical compound sestamibi, that flows through the heart and is monitored. The scan allows doctors to evaluate the heart’s pumping ability and gauge the amount of blood flow to the heart muscle. When the sestamibi scan is available in the ER, physicians are able to more accurately rule out suspected heart attacks.

Pritzker | Ruohonen & Associates, P.A., a leading Minnesota medical malpractice law firm, has the experience and resources to take on important and challenging failure to diagnose heart attack cases. If you would like a free consultation with a Fred Pritzker, call toll-free at 1-888-377-8900 or submit the firm's online consultation form.

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