Medical Mlapractice Errors Can Caused Serious Injury.  Learn more about medial malpractice to protect yourself and your family from avoidable harm.

At the Law Office of Scott D. DeSalvo, a leading Chicago medical malpractice law firm, we receive many inquiries about medical malpractice such as, “What exactly is medical malpractice?”

To answer that question, here are the five most common types of medical malpractice.

Missed or delayed diagnosis

When a doctor misdiagnoses a condition, or fails to diagnose a condition for some time, patients could miss treatments that might have prevented serious harm or death. The key here is showing what the treating doctor did wrong and how a competent doctor would have diagnosed the condition.

Childbirth injuries

A physician’s negligence can occur either before or during childbirth. Negligent prenatal care includes, among others, failure to diagnose a medical condition or disease of the mother that could harm or infect the fetus, failure to identify birth defects and failure to identify ectopic pregnancies. Errors during childbirth can harm both mother and child. The most common errors during childbirth include failure to anticipate birth complications, failure to respond to signs of fetal distress, failure to order a cesarean section when appropriate and incompetent use of forceps or a vacuum extractor.

Medication errors

These occur when a doctor makes a mistake with the initial prescription, administers a drug inappropriately or fails to note a potentially harmful drug interaction. In hospitals, a common error is giving the wrong medication to the wrong patient.

Anesthesia errors

These are relatively infrequent, but they can lead to permanent injury, brain damage or death. Before surgery, anesthesia errors include failure to investigate the patient’s medical history or failing to inform the patient of certain preoperative instructions, such as not eating for a certain period of time before surgery. During surgery serious errors involve giving too much anesthesia to the patient, failure to monitor patient vital signs, improperly intubating patients (putting a tube in the trachea to assist breathing) and using defective equipment.

Surgery errors

These errors include negligence during the surgery, such as puncturing an organ or blood vessel, operating on the wrong body part or leaving surgical equipment inside the body. Following surgery, the nursing staff might give inadequate care which could lead to complications such as a serious infection.

A Chicago medical malpractice law firm will help you evaluate if any malpractice occurred. If you believe you or a loved one has suffered medical malpractice, contact the Law Office of Scott D. DeSalvo, a leading Chicago malpractice law firm, to set up your free, no-obligation consultation.