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Welcome and thank you for joining me. I’m Gerry Oginski, a New York medical malpractice
and personal injury trial lawyer practicing law here in the state of New York. Today’s
video tip is about how an unrecognized heart attack resulted in significant permanent injury
to a young man. Here’s what happened. A 34-year old man is having chest pain and winds
up going to his local emergency room. They do an appropriate workup; they draw bloods
to determine whether he has an elevated enzyme level usually found when somebody has had
a heart attack. They also did a stress test which is literally like an exercise test while
you’re attached to an EKG machine that will tell the doctor whether or not you have a
problem with your heart as you are exercising. Three months after the patient had been going
to his cardiologist on a regular monthly basis; he has crushing chest pain one evening and
is taken by ambulance to his local hospital. While there, they recognize that he is having
an acute myocardial infarction – he is having a heart attack right then and there. About
six months after this man suffered his massive heart attack, his family came to me and said
“You know, we think maybe they might not have recognized his heart attack early and
as a result of that he may have suffered this massive heart attack, damaging his entire
heart.” My job was to evaluate and determine whether or not their claims were accurate
and true. So I obtained all of the patient’s medical records from all of the treatment
he received before including the cardiologist, and the local community hospital where he
went for cardiac workup, as well as the treatment he received at the university medical center.
And I had these records reviewed – not just by one or two – by three separate, independent
experts. Each one of them concluded that there were departures from good and accepted medical
care that resulted in this young man’s permanent and irreversible damage. This cardiologist
who read and interrupted this patient’s stress test should have recognized that there
were abnormalities. He should have sent the patient for a coronary angiogram, which literally
injects a dye into the patient’s coronary arteries so you can actually see if the coronary
arteries are closing off at certain points. If he had done that, he would have recognized
that 3 of his arteries literally were closing up. At that point he would have had a triple
bypass procedure before he ever suffered a massive heart attack. And the patient’s
treating doctors told him if he had had an elective triple bypass procedure he never
would have suffered the massive heart attack that he did, killing off three-quarters of
his heart. Because this young man’s heart was no longer unable to function and pump
the blood properly, he would develop fluid buildup. He suffered kidney damage, he suffered
fluid overload, this man needed to be on 40 pills of medicine a day. He could not take
more than 5 or 6 steps without having to stop and rest. The fact that his heart could no
longer function properly made him a total cripple and disabled him doing anything useful
for the rest of his life. So why is this important for you? Because if you believe that you’ve
been the victim of a failure to diagnose – whether it’s heart disease or some other incident
of improper medical care – and you have legal questions, I want you to pick up the
phone and call me. I can answer your legal questions. You can reach me at 516-487-8207
or by email at lawmed10@yahoo.com. I want to thank you for joining me. I’m Gerry Oginski,
have a great day!