It is easy to overlook your doctor’s poor bedside manner. After all, his or her medical knowledge and expertise is what you are ultimately relying on, not demeanor or conversational skills. However, it is important not to discount the role of effective communication with your physician. Effective communication promotes good medical care and treatment, and it reduces the risk of preventable injury. Sir William Osler,…

Although that is indeed alarming, the findings of an even more recent study present even more troublesome findings regarding misdiagnosis. Here’s the crux of what the research team states, following its examination of several prior studies and the culling of data from about 3,000 patient records: As problematic as misdiagnosis might be in an inpatient setting, it could be a far bigger problem for patients being…

According to a recent study, far too many patients who show up at emergency rooms in Ohio and across the country with symptoms of a headache or dizziness are not being sufficiently checked for signs of stroke. And that can be fatal. Indeed, the lead author in a recent Johns Hopkins research effort says that failure to diagnose stroke when a patient presents with stroke-like symptoms could…

In a recent post, we discussed some of the patient injuries that might result from negligent medical record keeping. The advent of electronic health records was widely perceived as a potential remedy to that problem. Federal officials apparently also shared that view, as tens of billions of dollars in federal funding has been provided to hospitals and medical centers for the purpose of subsidizing the…

The human body operates using an extremely complex combination of systems. That’s why we depend on highly-trained physicians to determine what is wrong when we are suffering from concerning symptoms. The problem is that these professionals don’t always get the diagnosis right. In fact, a report released by Johns Hopkins earlier this year revealed that medical misdiagnosis is the No. 1 cause of medical malpractice payouts in…

As we have reported in the past, misdiagnosis is the most common medical mistake that occurs in hospitals throughout Ohio and the rest of the United States. In fact, researchers recently confirmed that misdiagnosis was the reason for close to three out of every ten successful medical malpractice claims over a 25-year span. What’s perhaps most scary, though, is that about half the patients involved…

Hospitals have a tendency to use the most expensive equipment for tests, both because these medical devices tend to work well and also to justify the cost of obtaining the machine. But is it possible that equipment to diagnose illnesses and injuries can be too good? One example is a CT angiography scan that looks for pulmonary embolism. It has been said that pulmonary embolism…

If you think you have been misdiagnosed by a doctor or another health care provider, you are not alone. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 40 percent of Americans believe they have been a victim of medical misdiagnosis at one point or another. And considering the fact that the Institute of Medicine reports that more people die each year as a result…

As much as we would like to think otherwise, diagnostic errors are common in Ohio and the rest of the United States. When these errors involve the failure to diagnose a heart attack, cancer, or other life-threatening conditions, the results can be catastrophic. As Dr. Mehmet Oz recently wrote in an article, doctors and their staff work hard to give patients the correct diagnosis and treatment…

As we often discuss, a medical misdiagnosis can be a life-threatening mistake. Not only can a misdiagnosis put a person at risk physically, it can also cause emotional damage to a patient. According to an article published recently online in Annals of Family Medicine, psychological damage following false-positive mammogram tests can affect women for at least three years. A false-positive result from a mammogram means that the…

The failure to diagnose a serious condition can threaten a patient’s chances of succesful treatment. Research shows that mistakes occurring at primary care clinics are some of the most common causes of misdiagnoses in patients. A new study published online in JAMA Internal Medicine looked into how and why these diagnostic mistakes occur. One of the primary conclusions made by the study is that most diagnostic errors…

Doctors and other hospital staff members are trained to take stroke symptoms extremely seriously because time is of the essence when a stroke has occurred. There is a narrow margin of error, and if mistakes are made, a patient’s vital brain functions or life can be threatened. Unfortunately, mistakes do happen and patients or their families are left to suffer the consequences. When negligent failure to diagnose stroke…

When a person is diagnosed with cancer, it’s extremely important that the person is treated right away to increase his/her chances of survival. Unfortunately, it is common in Ohio (and the rest of the country) for a cancer diagnosis to be missed or delayed, resulting in a diminished chance of successful treatment. One of the most common cancers that is misdiagnosed – or diagnosed late – is…

When a person suffers a stroke, there is only a short window of time that medical personnel have to act before the results can be catastrophic.  Luckily, imaging technology like CT scans make it much easier for doctors to determine when a stroke has taken place so treatment can be administered promptly.  Of course, the doctor is responsible for interpreting CT scans correctly. When a…

Few things in life are more devastating than a medical misdiagnosis. Oftentimes, victims of misdiagnosis go through painful and expensive treatments for illnesses they never had. In recent years, studies in the United States have suggested that mammograms could cause many American women to be misdiagnosed with a life-threatening breast cancer. A recent study out of Britain reached the same conclusion. The review by an independent…

When people go to their doctors, they trust the physician to give them good care and to do what’s best for them. Far too often, however, that trust is violated by a doctor, and the patient suffers and sometimes pays the ultimate price. That appears to be the case with a cardiologist far from us in Cleveland. The San Francisco doctor was treating a 59-year-old…

You might remember a post we wrote earlier this month about a study that determined the most vulnerable patients in a hospital — those in the ICU — are more at risk of life-threatening medical misdiagnoses than patients in other areas of the hospital. The lead author of the study explained that symptoms of a heart attack or other severe threats were often missed as hospital staff focused on…

Each year, hundreds of women in Ohio receive the devastating news that they have ovarian cancer. What’s perhaps even worse is that many of these women don’t actually have the disease and go through unnecessary operations with high complication rates. That’s why a panel of medical experts has recommended that these tests not be performed on otherwise healthy women. The doctors concluded that there is…

Unfortunately, many people in Ohio and the rest of the United States die each year when physicians fail to correctly diagnose the symptoms of heart attack or another life-threatening condition. What’s even scarier is that a new study suggests that the most vulnerable patients — those in the ICU — may be especially at risk of misdiagnosis. The study, out of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,…

Ohio residents may be interested in a Canadian investigation which found more than a hundred cases of breast cancer that had been missed in thousands of mammograms in the Quebec Province. Apparently the failure to diagnose breast cancer in the vast majority of cases was due to one radiologist’s errors in reading the mammogram results. That radiologist retired in 2010 – one month prior to the College…