Heart Disease
Pittsburgh Lawyers Representing Victims Of Undiagnosed Heart Disease
Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in America for both men and women. The number of these deaths could be significantly reduced if all patients received proper care because modern medicine offers many effective treatments for people with heart disease, including medication, stents, pacemakers, defibrillators and bypass surgery. However, heart disease is often not diagnosed until it is too late or, if it’s diagnosed, the doctor or hospital does not provide the appropriate treatment.
I’m attorney John Gismondi, founder of Gismondi & Associates. We are lawyers with over 30 years of experience in representing people in Pittsburgh and throughout Pennsylvania who have suffered injuries because their heart disease was not properly treated by their medical provider. A powerful lawsuit can provide full and complete compensation for you, and it can also send a strong message that will help to prevent some other person from being injured by a similar mistake or accident.
Why Was Your Heart Disease Not Diagnosed Properly?
One of the most common cases we see is a doctor who “misses” a heart condition that then leads to a heart attack. Symptoms of an impending heart attack may include tightness in the chest, chest pain spreading to the arms, lightheadedness, sweating, nausea and shortness of breath. These symptoms are warning signs. They are the heart’s way of telling you that it is not getting enough oxygen or blood due to blockage of the coronary arteries. Sadly, these warning signs are often misdiagnosed as acid reflux or muscle pain and dismissed. If the doctor fails to run the right tests, the patient can be sent home only to suffer a heart attack days or months later.
Many times the doctor fails to discover that a patient has blocked coronary arteries (the medical term is “coronary arteriosclerosis”) that eventually cause a heart attack. The heart attack can usually be avoided if the coronary artery disease is discovered and treated early on.
Other medical mistakes involving heart conditions include the failure to properly treat congestive heart failure, a condition in which the heart is not pumping properly and becomes too “congested”; failure to diagnose people with abnormal heart rhythms (the medical term is “arrhythmia”) and providing an appropriate pacemaker or defibrillator; the failure to discover or properly treat problems with the valves of the heart, which may become corroded (the medical term is “stenosis”) and be in need of a valve replacement surgery. For all of these conditions, there are many very accurate and sophisticated medical tests that can be done to discover the problem, but it is up to the physician to select the test and then to interpret it properly and order the correct treatment.
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A Lawsuit Provides Compensation … And More
We wish that we could turn back the hands of time and undo what has happened to you or your family. Unfortunately, no lawyer has that power. However, with a successful lawsuit we can reduce the burdens you face by obtaining full and complete compensation for everything that you have experienced as a result of your injury or the death of a family member … mounting medical bills, lost wages, physical pain and suffering, mental anguish, and perhaps most importantly, the loss of the relationship and companionship of a loved one.
We will also fight for compensation to cover everything that you may face in the future. Heart disease cases often involve long-term needs for things such as future surgeries, specialized equipment, personal attendant care and much more. Our goal is to provide full compensation for all of those needs so that you or your loved one can enjoy the very best quality of life possible and make the most of a difficult situation. After all, that is the least that you are entitled to.
Aside from providing you with full and complete compensation, a lawsuit can do one other very important thing: It can force changes to be made by the doctor or hospital that caused the injury to you or a loved one so that no other person or family has to go through what you have.
Our Experience With Heart Disease Cases
Over the past 30 years, attorneys at Gismondi & Associates have successfully handled a variety of cases involving serious injury or death from mistreatment of heart disease, including:
- An award well over a million dollars for the family of a man from Altoona who died because a doctor misread a picture taken of the heart and failed to see that the arteries were blocked.
- A recovery in excess of a million dollars for a newborn baby girl from Pittsburgh who died at Magee Women’s Hospital because a catheter was improperly placed and punctured her heart.
- An award well above a million dollars for the wife and kids of a husband and father from Altoona whose complaints of chest pain to his family physician were ignored.
- A large six-figure award for a man from Pittsburgh who kept passing out due to a heart rhythm that wasn’t discovered by his doctor and no pacemaker was given.
- A large six-figure recovery for a retired schoolteacher from Connellsville who died because a worn-out heart valve was not discovered and replaced.
- A six-figure recovery for the widow of a man from Somerset who died while undergoing a treadmill test because his complaints of chest pain were ignored.
Call Us Now | Free Consultation
If you or a loved one has suffered a heart attack that was misdiagnosed by your doctor, call us now for a free consultation toll free at 1-888-529-1255. And remember, we always return phone calls. Our law office is in Pittsburgh and our attorneys handle personal injury cases throughout Pennsylvania.
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