When something doesn’t feel right, most people turn to medical professionals to find answers. A correct diagnosis can bring peace of mind and a clear treatment path forward. But when doctors get it wrong, the results can be painful, confusing, and sometimes life-altering.
Misdiagnosis is a dangerous medical error that patients face. The condition often goes untreated, symptoms worsen, and critical time is lost. These mistakes can lead to prolonged suffering, permanent disability, or even death.
At Poulos & Coates, we understand the heavy toll a missed diagnosis can take. With over 100 years of combined legal experience and an in-house team that includes a doctor and nurses, our firm has secured over $500 million in verdicts and settlements for victims of medical negligence across the state.
In this blog, we’ll cover some of the conditions often misdiagnosed and what you should do if you think you or a loved one is the victim of misdiagnosis.
What Illnesses Are Often Misdiagnosed?
Some illnesses are notoriously difficult to diagnose, and unfortunately, that means they’re often overlooked, mistaken for something else, or dismissed entirely. These missed diagnoses can lead to delays in treatment, irreversible harm, and emotional distress for patients and their families.
In our work at Poulos & Coates, we’ve seen how harmful a diagnostic error can be, especially when the condition should have been caught with proper attention and care.
Read on to learn what illnesses are often misdiagnosed.
Heart Attack
Heart attacks are one of the most common conditions often misdiagnosed. While classic symptoms like chest pain and radiating arm discomfort are well known, many patients present with subtler signs such as fatigue, indigestion, nausea, or back and jaw pain.
Unfortunately, these atypical symptoms are often dismissed as anxiety, heartburn, or musculoskeletal pain. A misdiagnosis can delay critical interventions such as cardiac catheterization or clot-busting medications. In many cases, that delay leads to extensive heart damage or death due to the lack of blood supply to the heart.
Stroke
A stroke is a serious medical condition where the blood supply to the brain is cut off. Every second counts when someone is having a stroke. Brain cells begin to die within minutes, making rapid recognition and treatment essential.
But strokes can be misdiagnosed, especially when symptoms like dizziness, confusion, difficulty speaking, or weakness appear mild or come and go. In younger patients or those without traditional risk factors, doctors may attribute stroke symptoms to alcohol, migraines, or inner ear problems.
Misdiagnosing a stroke can delay access to life-saving treatment such as clot-busting drugs (tPA). The result may be permanent disability, loss of independence, or even death.
Breast Cancer
A missed breast cancer diagnosis can be especially devastating because early detection often leads to a better prognosis. But misdiagnoses happen when radiologists misread mammograms, doctors dismiss patient concerns, or providers fail to follow up on abnormal findings.
In some cases, a lump may be deemed benign without a biopsy. In others, subtle signs on an imaging scan are overlooked or not adequately communicated to the patient. These failures allow cancer to progress undetected, making treatment more aggressive and reducing the patient’s chance of recovery.
Sepsis
Sepsis is the body’s extreme reaction to infection and requires immediate treatment. If not caught early, it can cause tissue damage, organ failure, and death. Vague, early symptoms like fever, confusion, chills, or low blood pressure are easily overlooked in busy emergency departments or understaffed hospitals.
Healthcare providers may fail to order blood cultures, delay antibiotics, or attribute symptoms to less serious illnesses. When those delays occur, patients can deteriorate quickly, often within hours.
Pulmonary Embolism
A pulmonary embolism (PE) occurs when a blood clot travels to the lungs, blocking blood flow and potentially causing sudden death. Although it is a medical emergency, PEs can be misdiagnosed because their symptoms, shortness of breath, chest pain, rapid heart rate, and coughing, can mimic conditions like pneumonia, asthma, or anxiety.
Doctors may skip critical tests such as CT scans or bloodwork, especially in patients who don’t fit a “typical” profile for clotting risk. When that happens, patients may be sent home without the treatment they need to survive.
What Should You Do If You’ve Been Misdiagnosed?
Missed diagnoses can leave you feeling frustrated, betrayed, and unsure of what to do next, especially if your health has suffered as a result. Whether your condition was overlooked, mislabeled, or discovered far too late, it’s important to take clear steps to protect yourself and your rights.
Here’s what you should do if you suspect you were misdiagnosed:
- Get a second opinion. A fresh perspective from another qualified healthcare provider may lead to a correct diagnosis and proper treatment.
- Request copies of your medical records. These records provide critical documentation of what your provider did or didn’t do.
- Track your symptoms and medical history. Keeping a timeline of symptoms, test results, visits, and treatment changes can support your claim.
- Preserve evidence. Save copies of test results, prescriptions, emails, and appointment notes. These documents can help show how the misdiagnosis occurred.
- Avoid posting about your condition online. Even harmless social media posts can be used against you.
- Contact a medical malpractice attorney with experience in misdiagnosis cases. At Poulos & Coates, our team of seasoned trial lawyers knows what to look for in your records, which experts to consult, and how to build a strong case.
Your health is too important to leave to chance. If you or a loved one suffered harm due to a misdiagnosis, you deserve clarity, answers, and a team that knows how to fight for you.
Hold Negligent Providers Accountable for Missed Diagnoses
A delayed or missed diagnosis can leave you reeling—not just physically, but emotionally and financially. If you or a loved one suffered harm because a doctor misdiagnosed a serious condition, you may have a valid claim for medical malpractice.
At Poulos & Coates, we’ve spent decades helping patients across New Mexico understand what went wrong and fight for justice. We focus exclusively on medical malpractice and have the resources to investigate and build a strong case on your behalf.You don’t have to navigate this alone. Contact us at 575-523-4444 for a free consultation today, and let us help you move forward confidently.
Greig Coates, M.D., J.D.
Over the last thirty years, Dr. Coates has successfully represented plaintiffs in every conceivable type of medical malpractice lawsuit–from single-physician cases to complex litigation involving over a dozen doctors and several hospitals. Dr. Coates has taken several thousand physician depositions in his career involving every known physician specialty and sub-specialty, and almost as many depositions involving hospital personnel such as nurses, techs, and administrators. He has tried several dozen cases to successful verdicts.
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