Amazingly, sometimes doctors or physicians assistants in Daytona Beach, Ormond Beach, Deltona and other Volusia County cities misdiagnose your health condition because they do not recognize classic symptoms of heart attacks. Some symptoms of heart attacks are also symptoms of the flu, such as nausea, coughing, difficulty getting a deep breath and weakness. Many people having a heart attack do not have the classic symptom of severe chest pain. However because heart attacks are so life-threatening doctors’ procedures require that they check your complete condition to rule out the most dangerous conditions. If they do not they may be guilty of medical malpractice and you may be dead.

Doing a good job checking to see if you are having a heart attack includes, among other things, doing a complete clinical, physical examination, an electrocardiogram and blood testing. Blood testing is important because cardiac enzymes in the blood are a key part of diagnosing a heart attack.

Some doctors or other healthcare providers may not be thorough enough when you present with conditions that might also be symptoms of flu. Take responsibility and insist that the healthcare provider explain why they are not checking for a heart attack.

To make things worse, a New York Times article has reported that, “A recent New York state survey, for example, revealed that most cardiologists said that they sometimes did not operate on patients who might benefit from surgery because of their concerns about hurting their rankings on state-mandated physician scorecards.”

For more information about heart attack symptoms see the article in the Mayo Clinic website linked here.

A particularly dangerous form of infection for nursing home patients is often a result of taking antibiotics. Clostridium difficile, usually abbreviated as c. diff., has become more widespread and deadly for nursing home and hospital patients.

Many hospital and nursing home patients have to take antibiotics for some type of infection. For example, very sick nursing home patients sometimes have to use a catheter because of a urinary tract disorder. This raises the risk of a urinary tract infection which requires an antibiotic to resolve.

Unfortunately the use of the antibiotic can cause the death of both the bad bacteria causing the infection and good bacteria in the digestive tract. This creates an opportunity for the c. diff. organism to grow. Public health officials have recently estimated that the disease is now killing from 15,000 to 20,000 people per year.

One of the ways the disease causes death is through severe dehydration. C. diff. causes extended and serious diarrhea which in turn can result in dehydration. Therefore at any time a nursing home resident has had a course of antibiotics followed by diarrhea it is especially important for the resident’s family to be on the lookout for signs or symptoms of dehydration.

We have seen a growing number of cases in which the nursing home staff in Daytona Beach, Volusia County, Deltona and Ormond Beach do not recognize the symptoms of severe dehydration soon enough. For information about these nursing homes see the Florida Nursing Home Guide. A nursing home resident should be transferred to the hospital emergency room for treatment of severe dehydration as soon as possible. Therefore, if you start to see symptoms of even mild dehydration insist that a physician evaluate your family member.

Symptoms of dehydration include thirst, muscle weakness, headache, dizziness, lightheadedness, dry mouth, lack of sweating, shriveled skin that does not bounce back when pinched into a fold, low blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, delirium, altered mental status, and fever. For more information on c. diff. see a recent article in the New York Times by Tara Parker-Pope, Stomach Bug Crystallizes an Antibiotic Threat, and for more information on dehydration see an article on the Mayo Clinic website.

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