In a poll conducted for the charity Parkinson’s UK, 26% of the more than 2,000 Parkinson’s disease patients surveyed said that they were misdiagnosed at first. Twenty-one percent even said that they had to see their general provider three times before being referred to a PD specialist. If you or a loved one in New Mexico suffers from PD, then you can imagine how frustrating this would be.
Many patients received unnecessary treatments
Among the participants who were misdiagnosed, 48% said they were treated for the condition that they were mistakenly thought to have. In 36% of these cases, patients received medication while 6% underwent an operation or other procedure. For 6%, it was a combination of the two. Sadly, 34% of misdiagnosed patients experienced a decline in their physical health.
No definitive test for PD exists
Parkinson’s disease can exhibit a wide range of possible symptoms: more than 40 in all. Combine this with the fact that there’s no single and definite test for PD, and you can see why patients would be misdiagnosed with everything from anxiety to a stroke or a frozen shoulder. However, advances in screening technology may lead to early PD diagnoses, and better education on PD, especially considering how it affects men and women differently, can help the situation as well.
Legal assistance for victims of a misdiagnosis
A failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis can sometimes occur because doctors were not living up to the objective standards of medical care. Diagnostic errors are actually one of the leading causes of malpractice claims. To see if you can file such a claim and be compensated for your injuries, you may want to talk to a lawyer who works in this field. The lawyer may be able to negotiate for a settlement on your behalf, litigating if one cannot be achieved.
