Going to the doctor for medical care really shouldn’t be a lesson in patience or hope. You shouldn’t have to sit back and wait while your doctor makes one diagnosis after another and hope that each one is the right one. Instead, you should be able to go to the doctor and have confidence that your doctor is making the proper diagnosis and prescribing the correct treatment plan for the condition you actually have. Unfortunately, there are some medical conditions that are often misdiagnosed.
Appendicitis is a condition that is sometimes misdiagnosed that can be life-threatening. This condition usually causes a very specific set of symptoms, but differences in body types and the way that an appendix points can lead to an incorrect diagnosis. If the appropriate diagnosis isn’t made, intestinal fluids can cause an infection in the abdominal cavity, but it could take days to weeks for the symptoms pointing to an infection to present.
Fibromyalgia, lupus, hypothyroidism, diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, cluster headaches, migraines, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, Lyme disease, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and celiac disease comprise the remaining conditions on a list of 15 conditions that are often misdiagnosed. In each case, the misdiagnosis can negatively affect the patient. Whether the negative effect is more pain or a worsened condition, misdiagnosis makes life hard for the patient.
If you have suffered harm because of a misdiagnosis of a condition your doctor should have been able to diagnose, you might choose to seek compensation. Learning about how to prove that the condition could have been diagnosed with the information that was available can help you as you build your case.
Source: CNN Money, “15 diseases doctors often get wrong,” Amanda MacMillan, accessed July 31, 2015