Incorrect Diagnosis

Incorrect diagnosis occurs when a patient seeks medical advice for a medical problem but diagnosed as having some other problem. This can occur for any medical problem and any symptom as there are numerous possibilities of medical conditions. But there are certain conditions that are difficult to diagnose as sometimes they remain under-diagnosed, over-diagnosed and even sometimes difficult to diagnose. There is also a possibility of getting diagnosed with a disease when there is nothing wrong. As the fear of having disease adversely affect the life of patient as well as his family.

Failure to Diagnose

The failure to diagnose is a condition of incorrect diagnosis as it happens when a doctor fails to identify the condition. Sometimes in the early stages of some cancers there are no or mild symptoms of the condition that also causes failure to diagnose by the specialists. Even diabetes and hypertension remain undiagnosed but do not lead to severe injury rapidly. That’s why majority of malpractice lawsuits happened because of the failure to diagnose conditions like lung cancer, heart attack, appendicitis,  breast cancer and colon cancer. Sometimes symptoms of medical & clinical accidents are misperceived and mistreated so care should be taken while treating any medical & clinical accident case.

Never Seeking Medical Advice

Sometimes patients avoid visiting the doctor as he suffers from some mild symptoms so the patient remains unaware of the problem. There are some conditions that remain under-diagnosed due to lack of symptoms like high cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes. Sometimes the patient is embarrassed about the symptoms like STDs, faecal incontinence and anxiety conditions. So the patient becomes fearful about the bad diagnosis and avoids medical advice as a form of denial like an unexplained weight loss might be feared as cancer by the patient.

Self diagnosis

Self-diagnosis causes high risk of incorrect diagnosis as the symptoms are misperceived and wrong prescription is taken. People often self-treat some common problems like headache or a common cold but these are sometimes underlying conditions for more critical conditions. So, regular common symptoms should be diagnosed from the doctor.

Care

But by regular checkups and screening tests the diagnosis can be done thoroughly and correct verification of the disease can be done by blood as well as chemical tests whereas if a single test is done then it might get misdiagnosed as the doctor will perform the test according to his presumptions and sometimes there is another problem with the body. So, regular checkups should be done to avoid incorrect diagnosis as it leads to delayed treatment. Even the situation worsens and doesn’t remain in control of the patient and even causes death of the patient.