A Walker County, Alabama woman won a medical malpractice lawsuit against an emergency room doctor who allegedly mistook her husband’s heart attack symptoms for a stomach illness. The jury voted in favor of the woman after a 7-day medical malpractice trial, awarding the widow $4 million.
In 2008, the woman’s 40 year old man visited the Walker Baptist Medical Center two days after he began feeling sick to his stomach. The man entered the emergency room complaining of stomach issues as well as symptoms of heart trouble, including chest pain. The lawsuits alleges the man “continued to complain of problems which should have led [the doctor] to question and investigate a serious and potentially life-threatening heart condition.” After four or five hours, he was released from the emergency room.
A few days after his release from the hospital, with continued symptoms, the man suffered a fatal heart attack. He was taken by an ambulance to the hospital, but doctors were unable to resuscitate him. The widow’s attorneys argued that the doctor’s care was below acceptable standards and that the doctor should have ordered blood tests that could have properly diagnosed cardiac damage. They also argued that the doctor was required to rule out a cardiac problem before releasing the patient. No blood tests were ordered. The defense expert witnesses testified the man was not having a heart problem, despite his complaints of chest pain, but the jury ruled in the man’s wife’s favor.
Failure to perform standard tests for diagnosing heart attacks, failing to obtain a patient’s health history, or misreading test results can result in the misdiagnosis of a heart attack. A delay in diagnosing or failure to diagnose a heart attack can have fatal consequences.
If you or a loved one have suffered a serious injury, disability, or death from a physician’s failure to diagnose a heart attack or delayed diagnosis of a heart attack, contact the heart attack misdiagnosis lawyers of Lopez McHugh, LLP. Our experienced medical malpractice lawyers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and California work for victims of malpractice to get justice.
