Emergency rooms are the first point of processing for many seriously injured patients. The snap judgment of the ER physicians is crucial to ensuring that their patients receive care that is relevant to their injuries. Unfortunately, specific problems, like brain injuries, can befuddle doctors who don’t always catch the subtle signs of a traumatic brain injury (TBI). The issues stemming from a misdiagnosis can go for days or even weeks as patients struggle with the symptoms of a TBI but don’t get treatment.
Emergency Rooms are Hectic Places
Emergency rooms are hectic, crowded places. Doctors, nurses, and technicians are overworked, stretched thin, and sometimes cannot give more than a few minutes to each patient as they are diagnosed and shunted to the relevant departments. These difficult working conditions do not allow doctors the luxury of contemplating a patient’s diagnosis or treatment regimen, which can result in misdiagnosed TBIs. Indeed, a 2016 study published in the Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation found that between 2009 and 2010, mild head injuries were or mis- or not diagnosed 56% of the time. As this study shows, the hectic setting in emergency rooms contributes to many medical malpractice victims.
Why ER Doctors Miss TBIs
The researchers gave several explanations for these disturbing figures. First, the researchers noted that interviews and CT scans are standard methods; ER doctors use to evaluate potential brain injuries. However, these tests aren’t sensitive or sufficiently accurate to identify all types of TBIs. Second, symptoms from TBIs may not present for days or even weeks after the injury. For example, headaches, sensitivity to light, cognitive issues, and other problems that indicate brain injuries often do not present until well after the initial injury.
Third, in combination with the second cause, ER doctors do not follow up with patients about their injuries. Patients are diagnosed, treated, and referred to a specialist. Therefore, it is nearly impossible for ER doctors to diagnose TBIs that delay presenting symptoms. Patients who think they may have suffered a TBI shouldn’t stop at an ER diagnosis but seek follow-up opinions. Essentially, patients need to take more control over their health and insist on subsequent diagnoses and tests.
TBI Symptoms
The following are symptoms that are associated with TBIs. Some physical symptoms for mild TBIs (i.e., concussions) include headaches, vomiting, fatigue, drowsiness, nausea, loss of consciousness for a few seconds to minutes, confusion or disorientation, and difficulty sleeping or sleeping more than normal, balance issues, and dizziness. Some other symptoms for mild TBIs also include sensitivity to sound and/or light, blurred vision, ringing, changes to sense of smell, and bad taste, depression/anxiety, mood swings or changes, and concentration or memory issues. An injured person is unlikely to experience all of these symptoms; however, they may experience several.
For moderate to serious injuries, injured persons may experience slurred speech, comas, serious mood changes such as combativeness, agitation, other unusual behavior, and profound confusion such as forgetting where they are, the date, or other basic facts. Physical symptoms include dilated pupils, a lot of vomiting or nausea, loss of coordination, numbness or weakness in the extremities, inability to wake up, loss of consciousness for minutes to hours, bad headaches, seizures, convulsions, and leaking fluid from eyes or ears.
A person with a moderate to severe TBI will likely present symptoms associated with mild and severe TBIs. Therefore, the injured person, or their friends/family, should carefully monitor the injured person to ensure that they seek medical attention.
Doctors are people. They make mistakes, and those mistakes are magnified when doctors cannot carefully consider the implications of a person’s injuries or when they don’t have time to follow up. Injured persons and their families need to participate in their medical care actively.
