Does anyone know anything about Veterinary Malpractice?

[lundie]

My 5 year old jack russell/pug mix had a seizure or fainting spell last week. She never had a history so I took her to the vet. They asked me about it, told me that it was probably a seizure and if it happened again to bring her back. No blood tests, nothing. They then recommended she get her yearly vaccines and a heartworm/lyme test. At this time they had a difficult time getting blood to do the test, but they managed after many sticks and her test came back negative. She was given her yearly lyme and a new vaccine for her, pro-heart. The next day she had a severe anaphylactic reaction and nearly died. I had to take her to a different vet to treat the reaction because the first vet was closed. I mentioned to him the fainting/seizure episode and that I noticed her tongue had been pale lately, so he also did a complete blood count. Her packed cell volume level came back at 10, 5x lower than normal, a severely anemic dog. He treated her with an IV steriod and told us that he recommended a blood transfusion because of her severe anemia but he couldn't do it there. We were able to take her to another office that can do transfusions and they ran a multitude of tests. The vet at the third office said her blood levels were so low that she believed she had been anemic for some time, because dogs with a pcv level of 10 are normally not able to stand and walk around like she was doing. She was diagnosed with a rare immune mediated hemolytic anemia. My question is...if the first vet we saw should have caught this? Her heart rate that day was a little high (150 bpm) and it was difficult to draw blood, combined with the fact she had a fainting spell with no history of those types of episodes. All of these symptoms point to anemia. Also with such severe anemia should she have been given two vaccines? Did the reaction to the vaccines make the underlying anemia even worse, and if the anemia was caught a little earlier could she have been spared the aggressive treatment she is currently undergoing? If the first vet is at fault for her current medical state (she is in stable but still critical condition currently) is there anything I can do?

[wardell]

Rare disorders are not always caught immediately. Never, ever vaccinate when a dog is sick. Her reaction is only going to make her sicker. Dogs don't need yearly vaccines, and doing so does absolutely nothing other than destroy their immune system.

[jomei69]

Doctors and vets are trained to see horses not zebras when they hear hoofbeats.

What does this mean to you? It means that with a single episode of seizure/fainting, the vet did not think it was necessary to run hundreds of dollars in tests to look for a rare disease.

If the vet had said that you needed to run $1000 in tests to rule out everything from lupus to cushings to cat scratch fever and the tests all came back negative, you would probably be thinking that the vet was out to get your money.

A isolated seizure 7 days prior (with no relapse or lasting effects) and a pale tongue (that you didn't point out and the vet may not have been able to tell what baseline was) would read horses to me, not zebras. The vet could have checked capillary refill in the gums, but I don't know how standard that is with this type of presentation/exam.

You can always request the vet records and ask a third party if they see egregious error. It's doubtful they will. I'm sorry that you have gone through this, and I would have NOT vaccinated at that time, but I don't see any malpractice.

After my dog's first seizure, the vet did a basic check-up and sent us on our way. He asked if we wanted to do $300 in blood tests, but said that for an isolated incident, he wouldn't do it if it were his dog. We were told that if the seizures changed to come in and we would cross that bridge when we came to it. We still haven't come to it.