Lately I regard them lower than lawyers...and my feelings about lawyers are..
Posted on 09/28/2007 2:22:53 AM PDT by Daffynition
ATLANTA, Georgia -- The celebrity was John Ritter. art.ritter.getty.jpg
Actor John Ritter died in September 2003 from an aortic dissection, a commonly misdiagnosed condition.
The actor died in 2003 of an aortic dissection -- a tearing of the major artery that comes out of the heart. His widow later settled a wrongful death lawsuit against a California hospital, alleging his condition had been misdiagnosed "at least twice."
Experts who study malpractice cases and autopsy reports say certain diseases are misdiagnosed over and over again. It's worth knowing what they are so you won't be a victim.
1. Aortic dissection: Sometimes aortic dissections are easy to diagnose -- a patient feels a distinct tearing sensation in his or her chest. But other times they're pretty easy to miss because the symptoms could point to other diseases, says Dr. Robert Bonow, past president of the American Heart Association. "Sometimes it feels like heartburn," he says.
2. Cancer: In a Harvard study of malpractice claims in the U.S., cancer was far and away the most misdiagnosed illness, primarily breast and colorectal. Study authors attributed this to doctors failing to stick to cancer screening guidelines.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Lately I regard them lower than lawyers...and my feelings about lawyers are..
I hear ya! It can be like playing roulette...or worse ...Russian roulette.
There are a lot of good doctors do, but too much of being a doctor today is just throwing drugs at every symptom.
This bad experience was on top of all the bad medical care I’ve received in my lifetime. I figured that about 90% of all the medical care I’ve received has been by incompetent doctors.
Ironically the best treatment I received was as a child by Army doctors back in the late 1950’s and into the ‘60’s.
Just wait until we have HillaryCare. The instances of “fumbling”, I predict, will increase every year.
Has anyone ever considered the motives of malpractice lawyers....like John Edwards,for example? All they want to do is get the jurors weeping and when that happens they know their teenage daughters are about to get a Ferrari.
And as for autopsies....clinical physicians can,and should,learn much from pathologists.But the rate of voluntary autopsies in this country,which used to be quite high,is now abysmally low.
Medicine is a **very** inexact science.Anyone who thinks it's guaranteed that even a competent physician is going to correctly diagnose their unusual or difficult to diagnose problem is crazy.
But a malpractice lawyer will ***never*** tell you that.
They told me I had acid reflux. It took 6 weeks to finally diagnose my heart attack.
Maybe I haven't been seeing competent physicians. I can't tell you how often I have gone in and TOLD THEM WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME AND THEY IGNORE IT. I'm 44 years old, I know my body.
OK,then....without looking it up tell me everything you know about the Sylvian fissure and the canal of Schlemm.
And for the record any third year medical student worth his/her salt could talk for three hours about either one.
MS is VERY commonly misdiagnosed, as is syringomyelia. (See my profile)
Heart attacks can be *very* difficult to diagnose.I worked for 20+ in the ER of one of the finest hospitals in the world (hint:it's in Boston) and it wasn't unusual for it to take a couple of days in the CCU to definitively diagnose some patients.
Perhaps you have some sort of reading comprehension problem. I know about what is going on wit my body. I'm not a doctor, but when i go to the doc and tell them of my past experience with my own health, they should listen.
I don't doubt that. But why, after several weeks, was another doctor able to look at the ORIGINAL EKG and start thinking heart attack?
4 trips to ER in a period of 1.5 years ....excruciating pain in stomach area, nausea. Diagnosed once as heart attack, once as stomach acid, another ulcer ... finally on fourth visit ... ER doc takes one look, and listen about my ER history and determines it was gall bladder. Ba-da-bing.
It depends on what you mean by "listen".If you tell a doctor who has known you for years "yes,doc,this pain in my chest is just like the one I had with the heart attacks I had in '92,'97 and '02" then that doctor is gonna listen very carefully to you.But if you go to a doctor who doesn't know you or your past history (that is,doesn't have an official record of your past history) and tell him,"doctor I have a pain right here.I think it's cancer" that doctor isn't likely to drop everything and say "OK,I'll schedule you for chemo tomorrow".
And what do you do about a specialist with whom you have had pretty good luck and a condition arises and you go in prepared with as much proactive information that is available to you as a patient ... and because they haven't either kept up with the latest medical journals, etc. refuses to even discuss the newer therapies with you? It may be who and what is available in your region, but I have found that doctors do not like you to be as informed as you are. Too many prima donnas, IMO.
New treatment modalities are often adopted slowly in the "hinterlands".If you want the very latest treatments for a particular condition you usually must go to major teaching hospitals in large cities....Boston,New Haven,NYC,Philly,DC,Chicago,San Francisco,etc.
You know, of course, that is not what I'm expecting.
If you are a doctor you are proving my point.
No I don't know that.Perhaps you'd give me a specific example of a doctor who refused to "listen" to a particular patient.I know that privacy issues enter into doing so...so perhaps you could "change the names to protect the innocent".
If you are a doctor you are proving my point.
No,I'm not a doctor but I worked along side doctors for long enough to know that in many cases a doctor would be stupid to "listen" to a patient (the definition of the word listen in this case being the one that I suspect that you're using).
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