Philadelphia, PA personal injury attorney Leon Aussprung M.D., ESQ. talks about the biggest challenges faced in handling medical malpractice cases. Medical malpractice cases present numerous challenges, one of the most significant being the difficulty of proving causation. In such claims, it is essential to demonstrate more than that a hospital, doctor, or nurse acted improperly. Establishing that their wrongdoing caused the injury is crucial, and it must also be shown that the injury would not have occurred if the negligence had not taken place. This aspect often requires a degree of speculation and must be supported by expert testimony.

To establish causation, it is necessary to engage experts from relevant fields, such as neurology, rehabilitation, or emergency medicine. For example, if an infection was not diagnosed in a timely manner, an infectious disease expert would need to testify that, in nearly all cases, the prescribed antibiotic would have effectively treated the infection, thus preventing complications. In cases involving emergency medicine or cardiology, where a patient presents to the emergency room with chest pain, expert testimony is required to demonstrate that earlier interventions—such as administering aspirin or performing an EKG—would have resulted in a timely diagnosis and a different treatment outcome. Proving that the outcome would have changed due to the alleged negligence is often the most challenging aspect of a medical malpractice case.