When you head to the doctor with a broken bone, you want to get the right diagnosis and be sure to obtain a correct treatment. It is important that you are given a cast or that your bone is set quickly after the X-rays are taken. Without the proper diagnosis and treatment, a person can severely maim his or herself with a broken bone. For example, if a man breaks his elbow and ends up in the doctor’s office, and the bone is not set and cast quickly, it can grind on the joints and create scar tissue. Sometimes, this can result in limited use of the arm.

There are times that people will head to the emergency room with a broken bone, only to receive a misdiagnosis. For example, a teen in California recently broke his ankle playing basketball at a local fitness center. He slipped, twisting and snapping his ankle on the ground as he crumpled into a heap. He was quickly rushed to a local hospital, where the doctors quickly took a series of X-rays. The doctors confirmed that he had merely sprained his ankle, and that a bit of painkiller medication and a couple weeks on crutches would make the sprain all better. The teen insisted that he had heard and felt the bone crack, but doctors would hear none of it.

The next day, the teen went to a specialist doctor, who said that his X-rays were taken in a way that didn’t even reveal the injured area clearly. When new X-rays were taken, they were able to determine that the teen had indeed fractured and sprained his ankle. Without this diagnosis, he may not have healed correctly and ended up with leg problems that stretched far into the future. While the family chose to avoid litigation, the teen’s father wrote a strongly worded letter to the hospital after finding that they had misdiagnosed the ankle-break. According to one South Carolina broken bone misdiagnosis attorney, if you needed surgery to fix your broken bones because the doctor did not catch them at your initial appointment, then you may be able to sue. This is because the injury cost you bodily and financial harm and could have been prevented.

Most commonly, a doctor will send a person with a broken bone home, claiming that the break was only a sprain. Then, the injury becomes more serious. Some people end up with a permanent limp from a misdiagnosed broken leg, or nerve damage because the bone was not reset. Others will end up with a lifelong need for an ankle or wrist support because of the misdiagnosis. In some extreme cases, the bone will need to be re-broken and reset because of the misdiagnosis. This will be completed during a serious surgery.

There are many reasons that a physician may fail to diagnose a broken bone properly. Many times it is because the X-rays were not clear, but the doctor does not want to take the time to re-photograph them. Other times, it is because a short-staffed emergency clinic doesn’t want to take too much time on each patient. They figure it is easier to send clients home with broken ankles then it is to take the proper amount of time to fix the injury. If you have been sent home with a broken bone and told that it was a sprain, only to find out that the doctors were wrong, then you may be able to sue for medical malpractice. Talk to a medical malpractice attorney today to discuss misdiagnosis and seek damages for the pain that you have suffered!