Symptoms for hernias are different for women and men

On Behalf of | Nov 5, 2015 | Failure To Diagnose

New Mexico patients who suffer from groin hernias may be interested to learn that women may present different symptoms than men. According to a surgeon who specializes in hernia repair, men tend to show large bulges in the area whereas women describe having intense pain without the bulge.

This can be problematic for women as a physical examination would not lead to a diagnosis. When some female patients undergo simple exploratory surgery or imaging, their doctors may still fail to properly diagnose the issue as a hernia. This leads many female patients to simply be told to live with the pain or undergo counseling. The surgeon believed that this undiagnosed chronic pelvic pain could have been caused by an inguinal hernia.

Essentially, the surgeon and her colleagues discovered that a peritoneal extension, or an external bulge that may occur in the area, was not a defining criterion for a hernia. In fact, the surgeon and her team reread more than 100 MRI and CT scans only to find that radiologists and doctors were not catching many of these hidden hernias. Although this data is now available to health care staff, the surgeon reported that doctors have been slow to accept the findings and apply them to patient care.

A failure to diagnose painful conditions such as hernias could result in unnecessary medical treatment and lost income if the patient cannot work due to the resulting pain. If it can be proven that a doctor failed to diagnose the condition due to the use of outdated information, the patient may want to have the assistance of an attorney in seeking compensation for the damages that have been sustained.

Archives

FindLaw Network