medical negligance

[kndtini]

I went to the emergency room of one hospital on saturday morning feeling very sick and in much pain; they told me it was my galbladder, I had stones and it would have to come out. They said I could stay till Monday and have it done there - or make an appointment with my own doctor and schedule the surgery. I opted for the second choice.
36 hours later, my husband took me to another emergency room barely alive. I was in renal failure, dehydrated, yellow and had a raging infection in my blood that necessitated two transfusions. I was in the hospital for eleven days, the first 7 spent in intensive care - critical condition. I was told at the second hospital that I did not have galstones and that a galbladder would not cause this near death experience.
My questions is - can the first hospital be liable for not finding the infection and misdiagnosing this as a gallblader attack? I know they did all the blood tests that should have shown I was in renal failure and everything else that was brewing???

 

[vrzirn]

if you are fair, fat, forty and female and presented with upper right quadrant pain and jaundice then you would be a likely candidate for a cholecystectomy.
Had you remained at the hopital and become progressively sicker they would have run more tests and had a specialist look over your lab results. A preliminary diagnosis by an ER physician is not the definitive answer. Finding the cause of an illness is often a series of "ruling out" various possiblilites.
You could have had a constriction of a portal vein, a cyst, a tumor,acute hepatitis, ruptured gall bladder, obstruction of the biliary duct, etc.
A mis-diagnosis is not a cause for a successful mal-practice lawsuit. You certainly may have your records reviewed by an attorney if you think otherwise.