Most malpractice claims arising from the treatment of the eyes result from four basic areas: failure to diagnose a foreign body in the eye; failure to diagnose a disease of the eye like glaucoma; failure to diagnose a medical condition that is outside of the eye but that causes symptoms in the eye; and poor results from cosmetic eye surgery.
Failure to Diagnose a Foreign Body
When an individual feels like he or she has something in the eye, he may go to an emergency room for treatment. The healthcare provider may either find no foreign object or may remove a particle from the eye. The individual still feels pain and goes to an ophthalmologist, who finds nothing. If the object has penetrated the globe of the eye, the individual is probably no longer in distress because the foreign body is no longer an irritant on the outside of the eye. However, the object is a site for possible infection, and the patient risks the ultimate disaster in the form of the loss of his eye.
Potential defendants in cases involving foreign bodies include the hospital, the emergency room physician, the radiologist if x-rays were taken, and the ophthalmologist.
Failure to Diagnose Glaucoma
Undiagnosed glaucoma, which is a condition of increased pressure inside the eye, can lead to blindness. The speed with which the disease progresses varies from individual to individual due to differing levels of vulnerability of the optic nerve to pressure within the eye and the duration of that pressure. Glaucoma can be symptomless; therefore, an ophthalmologist must conduct regular eye checkups to make an early diagnosis, usually by using a tonometer to measure intraocular pressure.
The examination for glaucoma is now quick and virtually risk-free. Therefore, the general consensus is that the failure to diagnose glaucoma because of a failure to perform the test is liability per se. In addition, a glaucoma test should be routinely performed on all members of a family in which a direct blood-relative has the disease.
Failure to Diagnose an Ophthalmologic Complaint as a Symptom of a Non-Ophthalmologic Condition
Often a non-ophthalmologic medical condition results in eye symptoms such as visual impairment. Conditions leading to eye symptoms included brain tumors. While neither an ophthalmologist nor an optometrist should be expected to treat the condition, they are expected to be helpful in its diagnosis and make proper referrals.
Poor Results from Cosmetic Surgery
An increasing number of ophthalmologists are performing plastic surgery procedures on the upper and lower eyelids for patients with sagging or wrinkling eyelid tissue. The difficulty in performing this procedure is in removing just enough tissue to achieve the desired cosmetic effect. Removing too much tissue can result in the inability of the patient to entirely close the eye, potentially causing damage to the cornea from excessive drying.
In some cases, malpractice claims are brought against ophthalmologists when the cosmetic eye surgery does not completely solve the patient's problem. Although the ophthalmologist is able to tighten the skin of the eyelid, he or she is unable to stop the aging process. Therefore, the problem will recur in time.
Copyright 2009 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
