If your or your loved one's brain injury went untreated or misdiagnosed due to the negligence of a doctor or another medical professional, it's important that you know your rights. In the aftermath, you or your loved one may be dealing whit devastating consequences. A physician's negligent act or omission during treatment could have easily been the cause of your or your loved one's injury aggravations. Were circumstances like:
- failure to diagnose
- failure to provide timely care
the cause of lack of oxygen to the brain or another injury that resulted in your or your loved one's current situation?
As dire and as common as TBIs are - 1.7 million annually, estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - there's a shocking lack of data and resources around them. The hospital and medical professionals that treated you or your loved one may have been ill-equipped to:
- Detect brain injury
- Diagnose brain injury
- Treat brain injury
To get damages in a medical malpractice suit, you want to prove that the medical practitioner or institution didn't provide you or your loved one with a suitable standard of care. If medical error, negligence, or omission contributed to your TBI or its aggravation, you can bring a claim with the assistance of The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary against the negligent:
- hospital
- doctor
- medical professional
If a doctor breached the standard of care and this resulted in your or your loved one's brain injury:
- They might be considered negligent
- You'll have a case for a medical malpractice lawsuit
Traumatic Brain Injury Damages
A severe brain injury can have an enormous impact on your life. If you, or a loved one, have been diagnosed with a brain injury that resulted from someone else's carelessness, Sean M. Cleary, medical malpractice attorney, can help you pursue compensation so that you can focus on physical and mental recovery.
Your case will be reviewed by neurologists and neuropsychologists who work with The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary. These experts can illustrate the extent of your losses and help you collect the amount of restitution you are truly owed.
As victims of serious brain injury caused by medical negligence, you or your loved one may receive compensation for:
- Cost of medical treatment
- Lost wages
- Loss of earning capacity
- Physical pain and suffering
- Cost of psychological care
- Emotional trauma
While a brain injury can be a life-altering event, the good news is that with the proper diagnosis and treatment, your or your loved one's brain functions can improve and could resolve completely.
Wrongful Death Resulting From Failure to Treat Brain Injury
Losing someone to a brain injury caused by medical negligence can be especially challenging. After losing a loved one, you may be left to make difficult decisions - financial, medical, and legal - during a vulnerable time with precious little practical guidance.
At The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary, our skilled Florida wrongful death attorney provides the compassionate representation you can trust. We have extensive experience seeking justice for families who have suffered the loss of a loved one due to malpractice brain injury. Like a personal injury case, a wrongful death action seeks to recover damages from the party or individual found to have caused the fatal brain injury by acting negligently or recklessly.
Accurately calculating the types of losses you can recover requires experience and knowledge of the needs created by such an injury and loss. It may also often be a task that family?members are ill-prepared to undertake during an emotionally challenging time. Lean on our experienced Florida wrongful death attorney to see you through.
Breaching the Standard of Care for a Brain Injury
Do you have grounds to pursue a brain injury case? Many physicians don't follow clinical practice guidelines for diagnosing brain injuries. If you or your loved one presented worrisome symptoms and your doctor didn't order the appropriate testing and follow-up, you might have a case. The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary can help you prove that your injury involved:
- A violation of the standard of care. To pursue a TBI lawsuit, you need to prove that a hospital, doctor, or another medical professional acted outside of the standard of reasonable care that was expected of them.
- A direct link to brain injury. If you can prove that the defendant acted negligently, recklessly, or maliciously, you also need to prove that the defendant's actions or inactions directly caused your or a loved one's brain injury.
- Quantifiable damages. To pursue a lawsuit and recover compensation for any losses you or your loved one acquired because of the injury, The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary can help you prove the brain injury resulted in lost wages, medical expenses or a reduced quality of life.
Reasons a Brain Injury Could Be Misdiagnosed
A brain injury is easy to overlook and misdiagnose, which is why your doctor's due diligence was so critical. Here are just some reasons your or your loved one's misdiagnosis could have occurred:
- Symptoms of the brain injury were not obvious until days or even weeks after an accident, fall, or collision had occurred. Medical professionals can easily dismiss some symptoms. When there were no obvious signs of concussion or external injury, the physician may have advised against an emergency room visit. One reason for this is because a brain injury is not obvious. There is no limping or apparent bruising. Many of the brain injury symptoms manifest themselves very slowly and progress equally slowly, especially when misdiagnosed and not treated, thus causing the misdiagnosis.
- You, or your loved one, did not hit your head. The most common brain injuries are concussions. A concussion is most often caused by a blow to the head. However, a violent movement was all that was needed to create a jolt and cause the brain to shift in the skull.
- Your doctor neglected to complete a thorough examination, which should have included gathering important facts about your circumstances, determining if a TBI was likely.?Many TBIs remain undiagnosed because the symptoms may not have been evident to the physician during examination, or they might initially diagnose a concussion but then assume the injury has healed. Depending on the specialist's area of expertise, TBIs might also appear to be some other problem.
- Imaging tools were relied upon for accurate diagnosis, but CAT scans and MRIs are unreliable methods of diagnosing a brain injury. They don't always show a TBI. There are neuropsychological tests that could have been administered that provide as much or more information than a scan.
- Your or your loved one's other injuries took precedence and demanded immediate and ongoing attention, so the possibility of a brain injury went unrecognized.
- You or your loved one received inadequate medical care or poor monitoring during an emergency room visit or hospital stay, which led to overlooked signs of a TBI.
The key to your medical malpractice compensation claim is to have all the injuries and problems documented correctly and as soon as possible. This includes having the correct documentation in the initial reporting at the medical facility or hospital, if possible. To confidently rule out a brain injury, your doctor needed to perform:
- Neurological functioning exams
- Extended monitoring of your state of being after diagnosis
If a medical professional did not explore all avenues of potential injury to confirm or dismiss the presence of a TBI, you might have a case of negligence or medical malpractice. If you, or a loved one, have been injured in an accident in Miami, Florida, you can receive a free, no-obligation case evaluation from Sean M. Cleary, medical malpractice attorney. You have a limited time to file your medical malpractice claim. Do not delay.
How Can The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary Help You Identify Medical Negligence?
The losses suffered in the wake of a brain injury can be:
- Physical
- Mental
- Emotional
- Professional
- Personal
Find out if you have a case and get the compensation you need. Sean M. Cleary, Miami medical malpractice attorney, can help you:
- Fully investigate the cause of your brain injury
- Build a strong case against the liable party
- Reach the best possible outcomes
- Develop a legal strategy tailored to your situation