Jacksonville Legal Blog

Adenocarcinoma is a form of cancer that develops in the small intestines. Because its initial symptoms include pain, nausea and vomiting, it can be difficult for doctors to pin it down immediately. In fact, it usually takes several months before patients are correctly diagnosed. Residents of Florida who are experiencing these or any of the other symptoms mentioned below will want to see a doctor.

The pain that patients with adenocarcinoma feel will seem like cramping pain because it could get worse after they eat. As the tumor starts to grow, the vomiting and nausea will come in. If it grows large enough, the tumor could obstruct the passage of food. Another frequent sign of the cancer is rapid weight loss without any effort on the patient's part.

A Florida naval hospital is facing accusations that it left part of a needle in a woman's spine when she had a caesarean section there in 2003. The woman now lives in Texas, but at the time, her husband was stationed with the Navy in Jacksonville. She had her third son at Naval Hospital Jacksonville and has suffered from pain ever since.

The woman's attorney says he will file a lawsuit against the government if there is no response to the allegations within six months. The woman described the pain as being like a fire or a poker at the base of her back and that it sometimes goes down her leg and into her foot.

When a patient in Florida faces a medical malpractice situation, there is a good chance that the problems started at the diagnostic level. According to a report published in March 2018 by a malpractice insurance provider, a third of the medical wrongdoing claims brought by patients between 2013 and 2017 were related to misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis cases.

In the medical malpractice field, there are three main categories of actus reus that could merit claims: incorrect diagnosis, procedural errors and improper medical management. In the report, procedural errors were mentioned in 24 percent of claims while medical mismanagement was the reason in 14 percent of claims. What this study clearly shows is that poor treatment decisions are often influenced by a wrong diagnosis.

Doctors in Florida see many patients with skin inflammation and other symptoms of skin disorders. One skin infection, cellulitis, is common, but there is no reliable tool for diagnosing it. Because its symptoms are similar to those of other skin conditions, many cellulitis diagnoses are false. Now researchers have found that involving a dermatologist in the diagnosis of cellulitis at an early stage can catch misdiagnoses and prevent unnecessary treatment.

Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital had previously discovered that approximately one-third of patients admitted to the hospital's emergency room had pseudocellulitis. This prompted an intervention in which a group of 165 patients who were presumed to have cellulitis were given a dermatology consultation prior to being admitted. One-third of those patients were diagnosed with pseudocellulitis. Dermatologists recommended stopping antibiotic treatment for 82.4 percent of those patients, and discharge from admission or observation for half of them. None of the discharged patients experienced any worsening of symptoms thereafter.