How Second Opinions Help a Medical Malpractice Case?
Some inexperienced doctors who are incharge of your health and diagnosis to help you determine your health condition and its proper respond treatment may commit a form of medical blunder called misdiagnosis where a medical professional incharge of someone’s health such as physician misread or misevaluate important laboratory results or misjudge symptoms shown by the patient and declared a very different health condition from the actual. This is collectively called medical malpractice in legal terms. Though, misdiagnosis is a big mistake committed in times of dire need, a second opinion may fix it all if patients are willing to invest their time in doing so.
Second opinion is when you visit and ask another physician or any medical specialist apt for your current condition to make another assessment of your current health condition and a smart patient would compare their evaluation and ask for the first doctor to re-evaluate the patient again to see if there is a mistake committed.
Retrospect of Misdiagnosis
From studies, there are high chances that misdiagnosis deals death in huge amount yearly as:
- 88% of total patients who sought second opinion has gotten better diagnosis and appeared to be just a light disease compared to their first diagnosis, 21% of them has really different disease from their first diagnosis and only 12% of them received the same diagnosis after sought second opinion according to a study by Mayo Clinic Corp.
- From the 286 patients, it suggests that high number of medical diagnosis errors happen in the field of medicine. So it is highly recommended to get a second opinion rather than relying on the initial diagnosis.
- An estimated amount of 12 million individuals are victims of misdiagnosis yearly in U.S.
- Unfortunately, there is a huge number of recorded deaths relating to misdiagnoses, an estimated number of 40,000 up to 80,000 people die yearly because of misdiagnoses complications.
- Women and children tend to be misdiagnosed by up to 30% compared to men.
It is also true that medical malpractice and errors ranked among the 5 leading causes of death in the U.S., so the need of seeking second opinion is a must. It is also true that most inexperienced doctors do commit mistakes as they have lesser experience and encouter lesser disease to work on. Physicians and other medical professionals doesn’t oppose on their patient on getting a second opinion and most of the time medical advisors recommend you to get a second opinion, when:
- when a treatment is costy, risky, and you think it is inappropriate on your current condition
- when you think that the given first diagnosis is not definitive and doesn’t satisfies you
- when doing an own research and found out that it is not recommended by any health-related government agencies in some specific scenario including yours
- when you are involved in the first few person to try their new procedure or medicine or what medically called drug trials or a series of experimental treatment or procedure
Every patient has rights to be secured and assured about their health and if you are not confident or felt like the physician is uncertain about his diagnosis, you can always seek a second opinion. If second opinion was sought too late and the patient-victim has sustained significant injuries that may lead to long term condition or even death, you can hire a lawyer and file a medical malpractice claim against them too.
Ryan Injury Lawyers
Ryan Injury Lawyers is an Ohio-based injury attorneys that represents clients who are victims of personal injury, medical malpractice, and even wrongful death. They have been offering their service for more than 40 years and has depth understand and experience of every almost complex client’s scenario which they have dealt effectively and with competence, call our office now for free legal consultation now.