Heart Attack Misdiagnosis

A missed or delayed heart attack diagnosis can put you at serious risk.

In the U.S., an estimated 805,000 acute myocardial infarctions (sudden, severe heart attacks) occur every year. Many heart attacks occur when plaque in a coronary artery rupture or erodes and a clot sharply reduces blood flow to the heart. Some heart attacks don’t involve a completely blocked artery. Whenever I, as a misdiagnosis lawyer, review a missed diagnosis case, I look at whether the care fell below the prevailing professional standard under the circumstances and whether that failure caused you, or the patient, harm.

When blood flow to the heart decreases, it can cause chest discomfort, but symptoms alone don’t tell you whether the heart muscle has been damaged. As an attorney for hospital negligence, every time I review a case like this, I meticulously look at the entire health picture.

I look at the symptoms, ECG findings, cardiac troponin testing, and how the patient's condition changed over time.

What is the best way to protect you and your loved ones?

First, I would never want you to delay emergency care because you’re trying to decide whether your symptoms are serious enough. If you have any chest discomfort or any other symptoms that may signal a heart attack—call 911 immediately. Don’t delay this call even to take aspirin. As you’re on the line, the 911 operator or a medical professional can determine whether taking aspirin is appropriate and safe for you. Aspirin won’t clear a clogged artery; it only reduces platelet aggression (when blood cell fragments stick together to form a clump or blood clot).

When a heart attack attorney reviews a case, the attorney usually looks at two main issues:

1. Did a healthcare provider fail to diagnose a patient’s heart disease?

Before a heart attack misdiagnosis attorney can file a Florida medical negligence claim for a client, Florida law requires a presuit investigation (a mandatory legal process that must be complete by a claimant before I can file a formal lawsuit in court). This notice of intent must be supported by a verified, written medical expert opinion that corroborates reasonable grounds to believe that medical negligence occurred and caused injury.

For heart attack cases, diagnosis begins with a careful history. This history should explore the type of discomfort and its history.

This history can narrow the search. For instance, some pains exclude concern for heart problems. Sharp pain that worsens when you breathe is less typical of a blocked or narrowed heart artery. That doesn’t mean the pain is unrelated to the heart entirely. Pericarditis, which is inflammation of the thin sac around the heart, can also cause this type of pain.

The pain of pericarditis is described as often sharp, stabbing, and stronger when taking a deep breath. As a heart attack misdiagnosis lawyer, you shouldn’t have to worry about meeting the textbook description of a heart attack before potential serious chest pain gets a proper evaluation.

To complicate matters a bit more? Symptoms of heart attacks in men and women can be entirely different.

What are the warning signs of a heart attack in men?

Men commonly experience the heart attack symptoms we’ve been taught to recognize first. Chest discomfort that often feels like pressure, squeezing, heaviness, tightness, or pain.

The chest discomfort can then spread to the shoulder, arm, jaw, neck, or back. Men may also experience shortness of breath, sweating, nausea, lightheadedness, fatigue or heart palpitations.

None of these symptoms may show up as crushingly painful either. Heart attack symptoms might feel mild and gradually build, disappear, and return again.

What are the warning signs of a heart attack in women?

Women can still share chest pressure or the pain most of us associate with a heart attack. But about half of them experience symptoms different from chest pain or pressure that are common in men.

For some women, the warning signs are unfortunately far less obvious and can include:

• Profound, unexplained exhaustion. She may feel suddenly drained or unusually weak even after a day of doing nothing but resting.

• New or unusual heartburn. The burning may appear without eating or develop with physical activity instead of after a meal.

• Pressure or burning high in the abdomen. This often translates as feeling like having severe indigestion instead of a heart or chest problem.

• Sudden anxiety or a strong sense of impending doom. Some women describe an unexplained, unshakeable feeling of alarm or impending danger.

• Unusual upper-back pressure. Rather than obvious chest pain, discomfort may feel like pressure or someone squeezing along their upper back, not chest.

• Sleep problems before the heart attack. Many women report unusual difficulty sleeping in the days or weeks before an acute heart event.

These complaints can sound harmless, and it is unfortunate that women’s less-recognized symptoms are often dismissed as ordinary. The above often gets mistaken as stress, acid reflux, poor sleep, and may not immediately raise flags for concern.

As a misdiagnosis malpractice lawyer, these are the complaints I zero in on. I want to know exactly what a woman reports before the heart attack and what her providers did—or didn’t do—with that information.

2. If so, would a doctor meeting the standard of care have reached the diagnosis in time to save the patient’s life?

Finding evidence of a missed heart attack is crucial, but only a small part of my analysis. I need to determine whether an earlier diagnosis could have changed what happened to you or your loved one.

Next, I trace the timeline. See when treatment was still available that could have limited damage. I don’t treat every heart attack case as if the same circumstances or clock applies.

When I investigate whether earlier diagnosis could have changed outcome, I look at which treatment options were still available and whether doctors truly acted in time.

• Could doctors have reopened a blocked artery sooner? If they did, did they make the diagnosis when they should’ve been made and when was the blood flow actually restored? At a hospital equipped to perform the balloon-and-stent procedure, did they do so within 90 minutes? If they aren’t equipped, did they transfer you to a hospital that can, and within the 120 minute target?

• If doctors couldn’t reopen the artery within the 120 minute target, should clot-busting medicine have been given? For certain heart attacks, these drugs can restore blood flow by breaking down the clot. Generally used when symptoms begin within 12 hours, emergency artery-opening treatment would take too long, and the medicine is safe for the patient.

• Where aspirin or any other clot-preventing medicines started promptly? Aspirin, or other medications should be given as soon as possible when safe for the patient, to help prevent the clot from getting larger.

Tests Doctors Use to Diagnose a Suspected Heart Attack

Whenever I review misdiagnosed heart attack cases, I want to know exactly what testing that’s been done, and when. Why? Doctors don’t rely on a single test, because every test answers a different question.

What can an EKG tell doctors about a possible heart attack?

EKG’s record your hearts electrical activity. It shows changes that mean the heart isn’t getting enough blood. Certain patterns can also strongly point to a heart attack.

But a normal or unclear EKG isn’t enough to rule out a heart attack. Sometimes, symptoms continue or concerns remain and either the EKG is repeated, or other tests are ordered.

How does a troponin blood test help diagnose a heart attack?

A high-sensitivity cardiac troponin blood test is a key test for a suspected heart attack. Troponin is released into the blood when a heart is injured. A high-result confirms the heart-muscle is injured, but, it still doesn’t always automatically point to a heart attack as the culprit.

What’s an Echocardiogram show?

Using sound waves to show the hearts structure, an echocardiogram shows health professionals how well the heart is pumping. It’s also a tool used to reveal complications after a heart attack.

One critical measurement is the ejection fraction percentage. This tells doctors how much blood the heart’s main pumping chamber is pushing out with every beat.

Have you heard the term ‘nuclear stress test’? It serves a completely different purpose here. Doctors use stress tests for selected, stable patients who need further evaluation. It isn’t a normal or automatic next-step test after a possible heart attack.

How do doctors find blocked coronary arteries?

EKGs can’t show a blocked coronary artery directly. For that, they use coronary angiography.

This test shows where an artery is narrowed or blocked and helps guide treatment.

Many heart attacks begin when plaque inside a coronary artery breaks open and a blood clot restricts blood flow. Not every heart attack happens this way, which is why identifying the cause matters.

When doctors need to reopen an artery quickly, they can widen the blocked area with a small balloon. A stent is often placed afterward to keep the artery open. In other cases, bypass surgery reroutes blood around severely narrowed or blocked arteries.

All this, and more, I examine. The timing of the EKGs, troponin tests, imaging and treatment. These tell me where the diagnostic process broke down and what happened to you next.

Call me.

No one deserves to reel in the aftermath of misdiagnosis alone. If you or someone you love has experienced cardiologist malpractice, reach out to me, your attorney for negligence. Call my office today at 941-214-7122, and let me personally review what happened. I can explain your legal options clearly, and help you decide what should come next.