Camden Heart Attack Attorney

You have heard the statistics. Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States. With more than 600,000 deaths attributed to heart disease, doctors and nurses should always be vigilant when patients present symptoms that could mean they are having a heart attack.

If they fail to properly treat certain conditions, patients are at an increased risk of cardiac arrest or stroke.

Most of the time, people who think they are having a heart attack end up in the emergency room. Doctors and nurses in the ER are often overworked. This can lead to them misdiagnosing a patient, which is common. In fact, diagnosing errors contribute a major portion of the medical mistakes that are committed each year in the country.

Every doctor and nurse should ensure the following:

1. That patient are fully assessed when they come to the ER, including vital signs and a verbal statement of symptoms (from the patient or family members).
2. That a full medical history is obtained if possible, including previous medical problems and family histories.
3. All appropriate tests are performed if a patient presents heart attack symptoms.

The brain starts to die after just six minutes without oxygen, which is what happens when a patient goes into cardiac arrest. All measures should be taken to prevent this from happening.

Not every case of a heart attack being misdiagnosed is due to a medical professional’s negligence. Even when all procedures are followed and all tests are performed, there will be times when a heart attack is still undiscovered. The human body is complicated and medical interventions do not always save a person’s life.

It is the times when doctors and nurses do not follow protocol that people suffer unnecessarily.