Misdiagnosed heart attack

Introduction

We will talk about one issue that can bring out certain problems. This issue is misdiagnosing of the heart attack, and if this happens, many serious problems can happen as a consequence,and including even a death of one part of the heart. Consequences can be enormous if the heart problems are not detected immediately after the displaying of the problem.

Misdiagnose

It is possible that a patient has chest pains and goes to the hospital. When in the hospital, certain test will have to be done, including blood tests. Here is an example of a situation in which a heart attack is misdiagnosed:

A man was suspected of having a heart attack, but the hospital staff had to do more tests, and needed more time to see what the problem was. Then they performed echocardiogram, stress test and the blood test, to see if the enzyme levels were on the rise, which is the main characteristic of cases of heart attacks. What is curious with the situation is the fact that the tests that were done are correct, but the problem arose when they had to be interpreted. The machines should definitely see if the levels are not usual and normal, but sometimes the doctors simply neglect those findings, and treat them as wrong and incorrect. The same man came to the specialist several weeks later and said he still had some pain in the chest area. The specialist then performed his test and sent the patient home, telling him to return in a month.

The next month, the problem was still there, and the doctor said the same thing again. He thought how annoying this man was, and the same thing happened even when the patient came for the third time. But after that, ambulance car drove him to the hospital, since he was experiencing severe chest pain and troubles with breathing. They put him in the same bed as several months earlier, but now they performed full evaluation and finally concluded that the patient was experiencing massive heart attack. When this happens, part of the heart will be lost, which happened in this case also. Further test showed that three major coronary arteries were blocked. If this was seen earlier, during several of his visits to the hospital, all of the problems would have been avoided by the elective triple bypass surgery. The blockage caused less flow of the blood to the heart and this lead to massive destruction of the heart. At the end, this patient’s only hope was heart transplantation. This patient then had serious problems with activities and physical efforts. All of this happened because the doctor dismissed the results from the computer, which proved to be correct later.