Clinical negligence team reports growing number of cardiology error cases

Posted: 22/10/2014

Cardiology and cardiac surgery are challenging areas for treating doctors and injuries resulting from cardiology errors make up a steady proportion of the clinical negligence team’s caseload.

People of all ages can suffer from heart problems and the failure to diagnose these properly can result in serious injury, including brain injury, and death. Mis-diagnosis of cardiological (heart) problems by GPs, A & E doctors or cardiologists include a failure to spot problems with heart function or with the proper function of the arteries and veins that serve the heart. Delays in performing or omitting to perform the correct tests, such as exercise ECGs or blood tests that signal the heart muscle is under strain, are another problem area. 

One of the team’s most upsetting cases concerned a young mother who suffered from a congenital heart disease known as cardiomyopathy.  Her treating cardiologists mis-managed her cardiac care, both during and after her pregnancy, and she died a few months after her daughter was born. 

The team is also currently representing a family who lost a mother and grandmother whose aortic aneurism was undiagnosed for over a year. 

Cardiac surgery is the other area where claims can arise.  The team represents clients who have been injured by preventable errors such as failure to check that heart valve replacement surgery has been performed correctly and failure in after-care.  One of our settled claims involved a man in his 50s who came through heart value replacement surgery only to be left without proper intensive nursing care in the days following the procedure.  Sadly, this lack of care led to our client suffering permanent brain damage.

If you or someone you know may have suffered an injury resulting from poor cardiac care, please call us free on 0800 328 9545.

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