Heart Attack Misdiagnosis Lawyer in Massachusetts

Heart Attack Misdiagnosis as Medical Malpractice

A myocardial infarction, heart attack, causes heart muscle to die at a rate that makes rapid diagnosis and treatment essential to preserving cardiac function and the patient’s life. When an emergency physician or other provider fails to recognize the signs of a heart attack and sends the patient home or delays treatment, the additional cardiac muscle damage that occurs during that delay may be permanent. When the delay results from a departure from the standard of emergency cardiac care, malpractice exists. Attorney Jeffrey C. Lavey represents heart attack misdiagnosis victims and their families throughout Massachusetts.

How Heart Attacks Are Missed in the Emergency Room

Heart attack misdiagnosis most commonly occurs when a patient’s presentation deviates from the textbook description of chest pressure radiating to the left arm. Heart attacks in women, diabetics, and younger patients are more likely to present atypically, with nausea, shortness of breath, jaw pain, back pain, or fatigue, without classic chest pain. Emergency physicians are trained to consider heart attack across a broad range of presentations and to use ECG and troponin testing to evaluate cardiac events. Failure to obtain or correctly interpret these tests in a patient with cardiac risk factors and concerning symptoms may constitute malpractice.

The Critical Role of ECG and Troponin Testing

The ECG (electrocardiogram) and cardiac troponin blood test are the fundamental diagnostic tools for identifying heart attack in the emergency setting. An ECG should be obtained within minutes of a patient’s arrival with symptoms that could represent a cardiac event. Troponin levels, which rise when cardiac muscle cells are injured, are measured on arrival and repeated several hours later to evaluate for injury. A physician who fails to obtain appropriate cardiac testing in a patient with risk factors and symptoms that could represent a heart attack may be departing from the standard of emergency cardiac care.

Harm From Delayed Heart Attack Diagnosis

Each hour of delay in treating a heart attack allows additional cardiac muscle to die. The phrase “time is muscle” captures the clinical reality: the sooner treatment is initiated, whether thrombolysis or cardiac catheterization with stenting, the more cardiac muscle can be preserved. A patient who is sent home from the emergency room with an undiagnosed heart attack, experiences additional cardiac damage over the hours before they receive appropriate care, and sustains permanent impaired cardiac function as a result, has suffered harm directly attributable to the diagnostic failure.

Compensation for Heart Attack Misdiagnosis Victims

Heart attack misdiagnosis compensation covers the additional medical treatment required because of the greater extent of cardiac damage, including hospitalization, cardiac rehabilitation, and ongoing cardiology care; all lost wages during the extended period of cardiac disability; pain and suffering from the preventable cardiac injury; and future medical costs for managing the greater degree of heart failure or other long-term cardiac consequences. Attorney Lavey pursues every element of these damages in every heart attack misdiagnosis case.

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