Why doctors misdiagnose your illness

In medical school, doctors learn that every patient's illness must be to diagnosed through a systematic process of elimination called differential diagnosis.  To perform a differential diagnosis, a doctor first identifies your symptoms.  Once all your symptoms are accurately identified, the doctor should make a list of all the possible illnesses that can cause the specific symptoms you have.  Say, for example, you feel achy and have a fever and sore throat.  You go to the doctor and report these symptoms.  The doctor is supposed to make a list of all the illnesses that can cause this constellation of symptoms, and then order the tests needed to begin eliminating the various illnesses on the list.  When all of the possible illnesses but one are eliminated, the doctor knows -- by process of elimination -- what illness you have.  This is how the doctors are supposed to diagnose your illness.  Unfortunately, many doctors fail to utilize the differential diagnosis process, and as a result, fail to timely diagnose your illness, misdiagnose your illness, or miss the diagnosis altogether.  And with certain illnesses, such as cancer, infection, appendicitis, internal bleeding, to name but a few, the sooner the diagnosis is made and appropriate treatment started, the better your chance of a good result. 

If you believe a doctor failed to timely diagnose your illness, or misdiagnosed your illness, please call the lawyers Berger & Lagnese at 412-471-4300 or toll free 800-350-6161, or email us.  At Berger & Lagnese, our attorneys specialize in medical malpractice cases, and work on cases in Pittsburgh, Greensburg, Beaver, Uniontown, Erie, Washington, and all of Western Pennsylvania.