Due to its ability to impact many different systems within the body, a disease called mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes, or MELAS, is often misdiagnosed. Furthermore, the condition is hard to diagnose because it can present a variety of different symptoms in an individual.
During a delivery, it is common for doctors in Arizona and around the country to use electronic fetal monitoring to catch any complications as soon as possible. An electrode is placed on the baby’s scalp to monitor its heart rate and other vital signs during delivery.
Hospitals in Arizona and other states could become part of a medical malpractice suit when a medical injury occurs. In 2014, 7,000 people died due to medication errors while 12,000 died during unnecessary surgeries. There are an estimated 1 million medical injuries annually, but roughly 85,000 malpractice suits are filed every year.
Arizona residents may be aware that surgical errors are a common problem in hospitals across the country and worldwide. In response, researchers and legislators are increasingly exploring the idea of recording surgical procedures in order to document errors.
For example, the University of Toronto developed a surgical “black box” that tracks a surgeon’s actions during a surgical procedure in order to collect data that could help explain poor patient outcomes.
People who are sick or have a medical problem expect doctors to get to the bottom of it. Most patients believe that medical practitioners will be able to identify an illness and provide the appropriate treatment for it, but this does not always happen.