Syracuse Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog
Do you know you statistical risk for a heart attack?
The American Heart Association wants you to know so that you can control your risk factors and avoid or delay the onset of heart disease and complications like a myocardial infarction (MI). The AHA heart attack risk calculator can be found here.
Computer-based risk calculators take a number of variables into consideration, such as a person’s age, gender, cholesterol levels, lifestyle, activity level, body habitus, blood pressure, and history of heart disease and diabetes. With this information, a heart attack risk calculator can estimate your chances of a problem over the next 5-10 years. “If calculators like these are available to doctors throughout the State of New York, we may see a decrease in the number of missed opportunities to intervene and save a life,” said Syracuse medical malpractice lawyer Michael A. Bottar, of Bottar Law, PLLC.
When patients report to their physician or an emergency room with complaints of chest pain, shortness of breath, jaw pain, sweating, and/or left arm pain, the heath care provider should analyze these variables and arrive at a differential diagnosis that includes the possibility of a heart attack. When doctors fail to consider and/or rule out a heart attack as a potential cause of a patient’s complaints and, instead, make a diagnosis of, e.g., shoulder strain or heart burn, and the failure to diagnose a heart attack causes damage to the heart muscle (i.e., diminished ejection fraction), the patient may have a cause of action against the doctor for medical malpractice. If the patient dies following premature discharge from a hospital, the patient’s family may have a cause of action for wrongful death.
Bottar Law, PLLC’s team of New York medical malpractice lawyers have decades of experience investigating and prosecuting cases where health care providers fail to meet the standard of care. If you have questions about care that you received, do not hesitate to contact us.