Subarachnoid Hemorrhage: Missed Diagnosis

More on our focus on Emergency Room medical malpractice.  The problem with missing this diagnosis is that the results can be disastrous.

A Subarachnoid hemorrhage is a disorder involving
bleeding between the middle membrane covering of the brain and the
brain itself, within the cerebrospinal fluid-filled spaces surrounding
the brain (also known as the subarachnoid space). Medline Plus

Headaches are one of the leading reasons why people go to an emergency room in the first place.  If the headache is a sudden headache and feels like one of the worst you have ever experienced, then chances are higher that the headache is more than a chronic headache.

A subarachnoid hemorrhage is sometimes misdiagnosed as TIA, trauma, chronic headache, meningitis, neck strain or arthritis.  If the ER staff move too quickly toward one of these results then you may not get a CT scan which is probably going to pick up the bleeding in about 90 percent of cases.  One other fact to consider is whether there was another headache that was somewhat severe in nature several days before this one.  That previous headache may indicate that the bleed was about to happen.  Not asking for a good patient history might miss this fact.

 

This entry was posted on Friday, May 27th, 2005 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Medical Malpractice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.