What to Do if You Receive the Wrong Diagnosis

Getting the wrong diagnosis means you may be having trouble getting an answer to your symptoms or are finding that your treatment isn't working the way it should. Aside from a wrong diagnosis, other diagnostic errors that can occur include a delayed diagnosis and missed diagnosis.

Diagnostic errors may be more common than you might realize, especially for certain conditions. If you think you have the wrong diagnosis, getting a second opinion can give you the accuracy and confidence you need in a diagnosis. You may have legal rights in some situations, such as if the wrong diagnosis resulted in injury or death.

This article will describe the different types of diagnostic errors, give examples of conditions commonly misdiagnosed, and provide stats on how often these errors occur. It will also discuss what to do if you receive the wrong diagnosis, how to get the correct diagnosis, and what your legal rights are as a patient.

What Is a Diagnostic Error?

A diagnostic error is the umbrella term for times when a mistake is made in the diagnosis. There are different types of diagnostic mistakes or errors.

A wrong diagnosis describes an incorrect diagnosis that is made before the correct one. It is also used as a synonym for misdiagnosis.

A misdiagnosis describes a situation when your healthcare provider tells you that you have some illness or condition, but it's incorrect. For example, a healthcare provider might diagnose the flu, but the patient really has Lyme disease.

A missed diagnosis describes the lack of a diagnosis, usually leading to no or inaccurate treatment. The symptoms in this case are never fully explained. This can happen to patients with chronic fatigue or chronic pain.

A delayed diagnosis describes a situation when a patient sees a healthcare provider for symptoms, but a diagnosis isn't made until much later. The delay in getting necessary treatment can have negative consequences for patients, especially patients with cancer. An example would be when a person is told a small lump in the breast is benign (noncancerous), only to learn later that it is, in fact, malignant (cancerous).

In some cases, it makes no difference that a patient's diagnosis is incorrect because the medical problem will run its course and probably heal. The fact that it was a misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis will be a moot point.

In other cases, the diagnosis is so different from the reality of the person's medical problem that the resulting wrong treatment, or missed treatment, can cause death or debilitation.

Conditions Commonly Diagnosed Wrongly

Non-specific symptoms are difficult to diagnose. They are called non-specific because they don't just point to one single cause, but could have a number of different causes. So healthcare providers usually order tests to get more information before making a diagnosis. Still, even with the right tests, healthcare providers can make the wrong diagnosis.

Here are conditions commonly prone to diagnostic errors:

• Asthma is a commonly misdiagnosed condition. It can easily be mistaken for a number of other conditions, including bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), allergic or non-allergic rhinitis, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), and more.
• Also commonly misdiagnosed is a heart attack. This condition is mistaken for chest pain, heart and respiratory diseases, abdominal pain, and gastrointestinal disorders like indigestion. The symptoms of a panic attack can also mimic those of a heart attack.
• Lyme disease can be confused with several other conditions sharing the same symptoms. Long-term fatigue, body aches, and difficulty thinking can be caused not only by this tick-borne illness, but also by other infections, medications, depression, diabetes, and cancer. A common cause of mononucleosis, Epstein-Barr virus also shares symptoms with Lyme disease. Complicating the diagnosis, this virus can also cause a false-positive test result for Lyme disease.
• Multiple sclerosis may be easy to miss at first. Sometimes people experiencing the neurological symptoms of MS can be wrongly diagnosed as having Lyme disease.
• Parkinson's disease is accurately diagnosed a good majority of the time, but there are cases in which it is mistakenly diagnosed as Alzheimer's disease or cerebrovascular disease. Also, when Parkinson's disease starts, it usually affects only one side of the body. These asymmetrical symptoms can be misdiagnosed as stroke. In other cases, dystonia—an involuntary movement, often a symptom of Parkinson's—can be misdiagnosed as stress, a stiff neck, or a psychological disorder.
• A wrong diagnosis can also occur with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Non-specific autoimmune symptoms in SLE are often misdiagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, skin disorders, and psychological disorders like anxiety and depression.
  

How Often Do Diagnostic Errors Occur?

Diagnostic errors could affect as many as 12 million Americans each year.

The actual percentages of missed, delayed, and wrong diagnoses vs. correct, accurate diagnoses, are difficult to determine, although experts put the rate at around 5% for outpatients. Missed and misdiagnoses are rarely reported because there is no real mechanism for reporting them.

If the patient dies, the family may request an autopsy, but autopsies are expensive. Unless the information can be put to good use, they won't be recommended by the professionals.

Even though we don't know the actual statistics, it's likely that more than 100,000 Americans a year receive a missed, delayed, or wrong diagnosis that results in permanent disability or death.

According to a study of lawsuits that were actually filed for a misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis, more than 70% of misdiagnoses occurred in the outpatient setting. Of these, emergency departments were most likely to miss infections and vascular events, like stroke, whereas outpatient clinics had more cancer-related misdiagnoses.

What to Do if You Receive the Wrong Diagnosis

You may believe you received the wrong diagnosis if you continue to experience symptoms even though you are being treated for a medical problem. You could also have a hunch your diagnosis is not correct. In these cases, figuring out what might be your real diagnosis may take some work.

Healthcare providers basically think like detectives when they need to make a diagnosis. They use a system called differential diagnosis to rule out some conditions and identify others as suspects.

If you think your healthcare provider made an error in your diagnosis, ask your provider what else could be causing your symptoms. You can also ask your provider to refer you to a specialist who takes care of the body system or disease state that your differential diagnosis process would suggest.

Consider getting a second opinion from another healthcare provider. A second opinion can help improve the accuracy of your diagnosis. It can also affect your course of treatment.

You should document everything, especially if you end up filing a lawsuit. Make sure to keep good records of your diagnoses, treatment, symptoms, healthcare providers, and medical bills. These records can help prove your case in a court of law.

Getting a Correct Diagnosis

Tell your current or a new healthcare provider about all your symptoms. It may be helpful to track your symptoms in a diary, along with other relevant information.

Here are things you may want to include in your symptom diary:

• Description of symptoms
• Start and stop of symptoms
• Intensity of symptoms
• Blood pressure
• Heart rate
• Diet
• Activities, like exercise
• Sleep quality

Legal Rights

If you think that a missed, delayed, or wrong diagnosis caused injury or worse, your rights as a patient allow you to take legal action. These types of lawsuits are called medical malpractice.

The three criteria that must be established for a case to qualify as medical malpractice are as follows:

• Standard-of-care violation: Healthcare providers are required to uphold certain standards when delivering health care. If a healthcare provider failed to meet these standards, that person could be held liable for negligence.
• Injury caused by negligence: The violation of the standard of care alone isn't enough. You also need to prove that this negligence led to an injury that would not have occurred otherwise.
• Significant damages resulting from the injury: The damages resulting from the injury must be significant for a case to be viable in court. In other words, the costs of pursuing a medical malpractice case must be greater than the very expensive costs of these lawsuits. Significant damages include disability; loss of income; unusual pain, suffering, and hardship; and significant past and future medical bills.

Many types of situations could lead to a medical malpractice lawsuit, including these examples:

• Failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis
• Misreading or ignoring laboratory results
• Unnecessary surgery
• Surgical errors or the wrong site surgery
• Improper medication or dosage
• Poor follow-up or aftercare
• Premature discharge
• Disregarding or not taking appropriate patient history
• Failure to order proper testing
• Failure to recognize symptoms
  

Summary

Diagnostic errors are more common than you may realize and can lead to injury or death. A missed, delayed, or wrong diagnosis may be more likely to occur with some conditions than others.

If you think you've received the wrong diagnosis, get a second opinion. When giving your medical history, provide a detailed description of your symptoms and lifestyle.

As a patient, you have the right to take legal action for significant injury resulting from a diagnostic error. Consult a lawyer or a patient advocate group for more information about your rights regarding a medical malpractice lawsuit.