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Heart attack misdiagnosis more common in women 

On Behalf of | Jan 14, 2023 | Medical Malpractice

When someone has a heart attack, any delay in care can be highly problematic. They only have so long to get the medical assistance that they need so that they can survive this serious event. If a doctor misdiagnoses the heart attack as something else and sends that patient home, they may pass away due to this error.

Certainly, this can happen to both men and women, but studies show that it happens to women more often. Doctors simply seem to make the wrong diagnosis in a higher percentage of cases. They often think that women are having panic attacks, suffering from indigestion, dealing with the effects of stress or something else along these lines. They don’t realize that it is actually a heart attack event until it is too late.

Symptoms can be different

One reason for this is simply that the symptoms men and women notice when they’re having a heart attack can be different. Women may be more likely to talk about being short of breath or feeling nauseous, for instance, whereas your average man who is suffering from a heart attack will talk about chest pain. Therefore, when doctors don’t hear someone talk about chest pain, they tend not to think of a heart attack first.

Part of the problem is also that doctors often assume that symptoms associated with males are more common. But, even though that is statistically true and men have heart attacks twice as often, doctors need to treat every case with an open mind. Assuming anything in a hospital setting can put a patient in danger. 

Those who suffer due to the mistakes the doctors make, and those who lose loved ones, need to know about their rights to seek financial compensation.

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