What Are The Consequences Of Misdiagnosing Lupus Or Receiving A Delayed Diagnosis?

What is Lupus?

Lupus is classed as an autoimmune disease and can be very difficult to diagnose. However, if you do have the disease then it is extremely important to have it diagnosed and to also receive treatment to help stop long-term damage to your body.

Lupus is a long-term condition that causes:

Lupus can affect various parts of the body, meaning people with the disease can show a varied range of symptoms, dependent on the organs or tissues involved. It’s also possible to develop several symptoms as the disease progresses, or see symptoms come and go. This is why it makes it difficult for patients to be able to receive a timely diagnosis.

How do you treat Lupus?

Depending on the type of symptoms you have can affect the type of treatment you receive, it is often treated using:

Other medicines such as, belimumab and rituximab, are often used to treat severe Lupus. This type of medicine works on the immune system and helps to ease the amount of antibodies in the blood.

How do you diagnose Lupus?

Unfortunately, Lupus is a quite poorly understood disease and there is not just one test to diagnose it. This means that it can be years before people get a diagnosis after ruling many other diseases out. Mistakes often occur because the disease has so many symptoms it can often be mistaken for another disease.

People often have Lupus for a while before they discover they have it, however, if the disease is not treated early then it can lead to irreversible damage to the heart, kidneys, and brain.

Due to there being no single test to tell if a person has the disease a diagnosis of Lupus often involves visiting a rheumatologist, this involves looking at your medical history and having blood tests for different markers.

What are the consequences of a delayed or misdiagnosis?

Having a delayed diagnosis can lead to irreversible damage to your body. Lupus is also considered a systemic disease, which means it can affect nearly every organ in your body.

What’s concerning for patients is if the inflammation is not checked for a long time due to either a misdiagnosis or no diagnosis at all, then you could experience organ damage and serious complications as a result.

This highlights the importance of being diagnosed quickly and correctly and how the timescale for a diagnosis is imperative. If you feel as though your diagnosis and/or treatment could have been delayed or have worsened over time as a result, then you may wish to put in a claim.