Heart Attack Malpractice

Heart Attack Medical Malpractice Attorneys Protecting the Rights of Long Island Residents

Duffy & Duffy is a personal injury law firm composed of medical malpractice lawyers who have decades of experience representing Long Island heart attack medical malpractice residents and others who have been harmed as a result of the negligence of a doctor or other medical professional. Some of the reasons for consulting our trustworthy medical professionals or medical experts may include situations in which health care workers fail to properly diagnose a myocardial infarction, the scientific term for a heart attack. Such negligence may have serious personal injury implications and sometimes tragic consequences for the person who is misdiagnosed. Our attorneys are committed to helping injured individuals throughout New York pursue the compensation they deserve.

Hold Negligent Health Care Providers Accountable

A person who is injured by a medical professional’s failure to diagnose an impending heart attack failure may have the legal right to sue those responsible for malpractice. The damages vary but can potentially include money for doctor’s bills, missed wages, pain and suffering, serious injury, and emotional distress. In order to properly respond to the situation and initiate a claim, the victim or a representative must file a complaint known as a medical malpractice case against the responsible parties within two and a half years of the injury. This is generally defined as the date on which the misdiagnosis occurred. In cases of continued treatment, the time period may start running once that treatment ends.

Medical malpractice may occur when a medical provider fails to offer proper treatment, offer wrong medication to patients, resulting in damage, injury, or even death. Medical negligence may entail a drug mistake that may result in cardiac issues and, in some cases, disastrous results and permanent damage to patients.

Unlike ordinary negligence cases, in which a person’s behavior is compared to what would be expected of a reasonable person under the circumstances, medical malpractice claims are designed to hold doctors and other health care workers to a higher standard of conduct based on their training and expertise in effectively treating heart attacks and other health related diseases. When a doctor is sued, for example, the question is usually whether he or she acted with at least as much care as a generally competent doctor with similar training would have used under the same circumstances. Would the typical doctor have properly diagnosed a patient suffering from a heart attack based on the facts of the particular case? Did he or she perform the types of tests and evaluations that were advisable in the particular scenario? Did he or she make a surgical error? If not, and if harm directly resulted from the lapse in care, the medical provider or doctor is likely to be held liable for malpractice.

Establishing the standard of care is a key element of pursuing a medical negligence claim. It often requires a wide range of evidence to explain the information that the doctor had at the time, as well as expert testimony about what should have been expected of the doctor under the circumstances.

Common Mistakes in Failure to Diagnose Cases

Many cases of malpractice happen when a health care professional or the doctors fail to consider the patient’s risk factors, notice the early warning signs and symptoms of a heart attack and send the patient home instead of performing further testing so as to properly treat them. Generally, a person who shows the signs of a possible heart attack should be administered an electrocardiogram to identify if the heart is beating properly or if there have been any disruptions. A creatinine phosphate conaise (CPK) test, identifying whether the CPK enzyme, which signals that a heart attack has occurred, is present in the blood, and other specific tests are also usually part of the care and evaluation expected from doctors in cases in which a patient may be suffering a heart attack.

Explore Your Options After an Injury with a Long Island Lawyer

At Duffy & Duffy, we have represented a number of clients in medical malpractice cases stemming from a failure to diagnose colon cancer, heart attack, other particular conditions or from a misdiagnosis. That includes a wrongful death case in which a man who suffered a myocardial infarction while at work and was not properly diagnosed by emergency room staff later died.

If you or a loved one has been injured as a result of a failure to properly diagnose a heart attack on Long Island or the surrounding area, you should not hesitate to consult the medical negligence attorneys at Duffy & Duffy in New York. Our team has represented individuals in the Bronx and Queens as well as Nassau and Suffolk Counties and elsewhere in New York. Contact us online or call us at (516) 844-0248 for a free consultation.