When feeling bad, people rely on their medical providers to diagnose their conditions and provide the correct treatment to help them recover. Unfortunately, sometimes doctors do not make the right identifications of patients’ ailments, an issue that commonly occurs with diabetes.
Understanding the common factors that lead to medical professionals misdiagnosing diabetes may help people ensure they receive accurate diagnoses and, therefore, the treatment they need.
Symptoms that mimic other conditions
Sometimes, the symptoms which people experience due to diabetes contribute to physicians incorrectly identifying their conditions. For example, a patient might complain of stomach pains, nausea and vomiting. His or her health care provider may look to gastrointestinal or other such issues as the cause, overlooking the possibility of a condition affecting how the body processes food into energy.
Lack of understanding
According to the American Diabetes Association, medical providers’ misdiagnoses of diabetes sometimes result from a lack of understanding. Many previously held that Type 1 diabetes started only in childhood. Consequently, physicians occasionally overlook this condition as a possibility or incorrectly diagnose it as Type 2 diabetes. People of all ages, sizes, shapes and races, however, may develop the condition.
Test inaccuracies
According to Healthline.com, testing inaccuracies occasionally lead to the misdiagnosis of diabetes in some adult patients. A genetic variant that some African American patients have has the potential to reduce the precision of the A1C blood test. The A1C test plays an important role for medical professionals in diagnosing and monitoring diabetes in their patients. Thus, a physician may not administer the correct treatments because of incorrect test results.
When people suffer worsened health conditions due to the missed diagnosis of diabetes, they often require time off work and additional medical care, which carries unexpected expenses. In such cases, patients may consider pursuing options to recover compensation for their associated losses.