Medical professionals have a duty of care toward their patients. This means that they must provide appropriate and timely treatment. Unfortunately, that isn’t always a given. In fact, medical errors are so common in the country that they’re considered the third-leading cause of death.
If you have suffered an injury because of medical malpractice, it’s important to understand what your legal rights are. You may, for example, have grounds to pursue a lawsuit. Consider these five common medical errors that can lead to a malpractice lawsuit.
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1. Misdiagnosis Or Delayed Diagnosis
Some of the most common types of medical errors that can result in a medical malpractice lawsuit revolve around a failure to diagnose correctly and promptly. A misdiagnosis means that a medical professional begins treatment for another condition, which doesn’t help your existing illness or injury and can also put you at risk of further harm.
Sometimes, medical professionals might even fail to recognize that anything is wrong. A delayed diagnosis can be serious, especially when dealing with time-sensitive conditions like cancer. Without a timely diagnosis, your treatment can be delayed, which can mean worse outcomes once the appropriate care takes place.
2. Surgical Mistakes
All surgeries carry some inherent risks, but if a medical professional makes a mistake out of negligence, the results can be catastrophic. Surgical mistakes can occur before, during, and after the procedure and can include actions such as:
- Operating on the wrong body part
- Operating on the wrong patient
- Causing nerve damage
- Leaving foreign objects in patients
Wrong site, wrong procedure, and wrong surgery errors are some of the most common surgical mistakes. They occur in one in every 112,000 procedures. In hospitals, these are supposed to be “never events,” which means even a single incident is one too many.
3. Birth Injuries
Birth injuries can have serious consequences for both the child and their parents. These incidents tend to occur when a medical professional fails to monitor the fetus through gestation and labor. Errors can also occur immediately after delivery, especially if doctors don’t notice signs of distress.
Birth injuries are often the result of prolonged labor, resulting in oxygen deprivation, and they can also happen because of the improper use of forceps or vacuum extractors. A baby can suffer broken bones as well if a doctor uses too much force during delivery.
Additionally, there may be maternal infections and other illnesses that aren’t caught in time to prevent harm to the baby. If a doctor should have spotted the problem and didn’t, they can be held liable.
4. Medication Errors
Medication errors can occur at any point in the treatment process. A doctor may prescribe the wrong medication or dose, a nurse at a hospital could administer the prescribed drug incorrectly, or the pharmacist could mistake one medication for another when filling a prescription.
Medication errors can be very dangerous. Your original illness or injury can go untreated, while the drugs you’re given may cause further damage. It’s possible to suffer adverse side effects, especially if the wrong medication interacts with another treatment or triggers an allergic reaction.
5. Anesthesia Errors
Anesthetics are essential during all manner of procedures, and when administered correctly, they can prevent you from feeling any discomfort. If the anesthesiologist is negligent, however, anesthesia can be deadly.
Mistakes can occur when deciding on the appropriate dosage, resulting in patients getting too much or too little anesthesia. Too much can put you at risk of experiencing severe blood pressure drops, respiratory distress, and a number of other potentially fatal issues. Too little anesthesia can leave you awake during the entire procedure.
Often, the problem is improper monitoring. Medical professionals must closely monitor patients and act quickly if they notice any signs of distress.
Injuries like brain death and paralysis can occur because of anesthesia errors. Tragically, fatalities are a possible outcome of this type of medical negligence, too.
Turn To Our Houston Medical Malpractice Attorneys
Proving that medical negligence occurred so that you can hold doctors and other healthcare providers liable isn’t easy. It can require getting testimonies from other medical professionals who can state that the defendant offered substandard care. The complexities of these cases are such that an attorney’s help is vital.
At Attorney Brian White Personal Injury Lawyers, our skilled team of Houston medical malpractice lawyers has decades of experience helping injured victims like you receive the assistance they need after suffering harm because of another party’s misconduct. We work tirelessly for our clients and take a personalized approach to every case.
If you have been injured because of a medical professional’s negligence, you have rights. Contact Attorney Brian White Personal Injury Lawyers to speak with a Texas personal injury lawyer today.
