John Grider

Review of Medical Center Enterprise

My mother presented to the ER with lower extremity...

My mother presented to the ER with lower extremity edema and ascites of unknown cause that had appeared in the past 3 weeks. She had pitting edema, rapid breathing and reported that she became breathless lying flat on her back. Her pulse was 120 - - tachycardic. These are classic symptoms of congestive heart failure and the expected course of workup would be ECG, chest xray and echocardiagram. These are fast, inexpensive tests.

Instead the ER staff seemed to suspect abdominal carcinoma (granted a possibility but pitting edema indicates heart) and investigated her liver using CT imaging with contrast media.

As far as I know, she was never given a simple ECG and/or echocardiagram which would have revealed (to competent staff, anyway) the underlying cause of the edema - - congestive heart failure due to atrial fibrillation - - the most common cardiac arrythmia in the USA. She was sent home with a prescription for a diuretic and orders to follow up with her primary care doctor in 4-5 days -- NO MENTION OF GREATLY INCREASED STROKE RISK from the undiagnosed a-fib.

In the end the ER billed Medicare for expensive, unnecessary CT imaging when a simple ECG would have revealed the root problem. If you go in to the ER with something sticking out of your body that's not supposed to be there, maybe you will have better chances of receiving a correct diagnosis. I give them 2 stars because she walked out alive - - they didn't do anything to kill her. But, neither did they do anything to help.