Laboratory Errors

Are You A Laboratory Errors Malpractice Victim?

When you visit a medical facility, typically there are blood, tissue and other samples taken for diagnosis purposes. Patient outcome is therefore directly related to the total quality of laboratory information from patient management, including diagnosis, treatment of disease, clinical monitoring, and disease prevention.

Are you a victim of laboratory errors in NJ?

If you are a victim of a laboratory error, you must contact an experienced attorney.

For a patient, some of the most devastating medical mistakes can start in the lab. Studies show that 3 percent to 5 percent of the billions of specimens taken each year are defective. These can be a biopsy that doesn’t extract the tumor cells or blood that isn’t drawn correctly or a mix-up with another patient’s sample.

Unfortunately, the error rate is significantly higher and more dangerous in common tests for many types of cancers, where a false positive may lead to unnecessary surgery or a false negative can miss a deadly skin cancer.

In reality, many mistakes are caught by doctors, nurses or other staffers just in time to avoid harm to a patient. Although when such mistakes slip through the cracks, even the best-trained pathologists may misread a slide because the specimen isn’t good enough or they just don’t see the cancer cells, which can lead to devastating results.