If A Doctor Misses Symptoms of a Heart Attack

If your doctor misses symptoms of a heart attack, the consequences could be very serious. Successful recovery from a heart attack depends on prompt and correct treatment, and without such treatment, your heart can be damaged, sometimes irreparably. You may also suffer from a number of other problems resulting from a heart attack, up to and including death. As such, if your doctor misses the symptoms of a heart attack, you must understand whether you have a case for medical malpractice or not. If your doctor is liable for malpractice, he should be held legally accountable.

Understanding Medical Malpractice

Medical malpractice is designed to hold doctors civilly liable for wrongdoing. In other words, if your doctor does something wrong and misses symptoms of a heart attack, you may be able to sue him in a civil suit to collect monetary damages. Like all civil suits, there are certain elements of your case that you must prove if you want to win and recover your damages. In a medical malpractice case in particular, you must be able to prove:

• Negligence on the part of the doctor. In other words, if it wasn't negligent of your doctor to miss the symptoms of the heart attack, you cannot recover. To determine whether it was negligent or not, you need to compare your doctor's behavior to a reasonable doctor. If any reasonable physician would have caught the symptoms and properly diagnosed you and your doctor didn't, he is considered negligent. An expert witness (or many expert witnesses) will usually need to testify to this.
• That the negligence was the proximate or direct cause of some type of damage. In other words, the fact that the doctor missed the symptoms must have actually resulted in the heart attack or in some other type of injury. If you would have had a heart attack even if the doctor caught the symptoms and if the heart attack would have been equally severe, then you didn't really suffer any damage that the court can compensate you for, since you'd have been no better off even without your doctor's negligence.

Getting Help

In most cases, a reasonably competent doctor will be able to recognize and understand the symptoms of a heart attack. This means if your doctor didn't, you may have a great case for medical malpractice and you should consult with a qualified attorney as soon as possible to find out your best course of action for holding your physician responsible for damages.