A pulmonary embolism misdiagnosis lawsuit is a medical malpractice claim brought by patients or their families after a healthcare provider fails to correctly diagnose or treat a blood clot in the lungs. These cases hold physicians, emergency departments, and hospitals accountable for delayed diagnosis that leads to patient injury or death—one of the most serious outcomes in healthcare litigation. In January 2025, a Maryland court awarded $7.25 million to the family of a 22-year-old man who died from pulmonary embolism after his condition was misdiagnosed, illustrating the severe consequences and substantial damages juries are willing to impose when medical negligence results in preventable death.
Pulmonary embolism is among the leading causes of preventable hospital deaths, yet misdiagnosis remains disturbingly common. Clinical research shows that emergency departments misdiagnose PE in 27.5% of cases, while inpatient hospital settings have even higher misdiagnosis rates at 53.6%. These statistics explain why PE-related malpractice litigation has become a significant category in medical negligence law, with litigation research identifying 277 distinct PE-related malpractice cases. The gap between how often PE is missed and how often it should be caught creates a direct pathway to liability for healthcare providers who fail to follow established diagnostic protocols.
Table of Contents
- How Common Are Pulmonary Embolism Misdiagnosis Lawsuits?
- Misdiagnosis Rates That Exceed Clinical Standards
- Settlement Amounts in Pulmonary Embolism Misdiagnosis Cases
- Where PE Misdiagnosis Occurs and Why It Matters
- The Role of Prior Surgery in PE Misdiagnosis Cases
- Diagnostic Testing and When It Should Be Used
- The Future of PE Misdiagnosis Litigation
- Conclusion
How Common Are Pulmonary Embolism Misdiagnosis Lawsuits?
Pulmonary embolism misdiagnosis litigation is far more prevalent than many patients realize. Research examining PE-related malpractice cases found 277 documented cases involving failure to diagnose or properly treat this condition. This substantial caseload reflects both the frequency of PE in the general population and the significant gap between how often the condition is missed and how often it should be detected. The vast majority of these cases—62%—center on allegations of “failure to diagnose and treat,” meaning physicians either missed the PE entirely or failed to initiate appropriate treatment after diagnosis.
The defendants in PE misdiagnosis cases span multiple medical specialties, but certain physicians appear more frequently than others. Internists account for 33% of PE misdiagnosis defendants, followed by emergency medicine physicians at 18%, orthopedic surgeons at 16%, and obstetricians/gynecologists at 9%. This distribution reveals that PE misdiagnosis can occur across different clinical settings—from emergency departments to inpatient wards to surgical recovery units. The presence of orthopedic surgeons in this list is particularly notable because patients recovering from orthopedic surgery are at elevated risk for PE, making post-surgical vigilance a critical standard of care that is often neglected.
Misdiagnosis Rates That Exceed Clinical Standards
The stark difference between emergency department and inpatient misdiagnosis rates reveals a troubling pattern in how healthcare systems handle PE suspicion. A 27.5% misdiagnosis rate in emergency departments is already concerning, but the 53.6% misdiagnosis rate in inpatient hospital settings suggests that even hospitalized patients—who presumably have continuous monitoring and ready access to diagnostic testing—are being missed at alarmingly high rates. This limitation in healthcare delivery creates situations where a patient may be admitted to the hospital and actually have a higher risk of PE being overlooked than if they had remained in the emergency department where their initial complaint was taken seriously. One major factor in these failures is poor compliance with established diagnostic algorithms.
Research shows only 74% compliance with proper diagnostic algorithms for PE evaluation—meaning in roughly one of every four cases, physicians are not following the standard protocol that should detect PE. When a physician deviates from evidence-based diagnostic pathways without clear clinical justification, it becomes evidence of negligence. A patient presenting with chest pain and shortness of breath, or showing risk factors after surgery, should trigger a specific diagnostic sequence. When that sequence is skipped or abbreviated, and PE is subsequently missed, malpractice liability becomes difficult for defendants to escape.
Settlement Amounts in Pulmonary Embolism Misdiagnosis Cases
Juries have consistently awarded substantial damages in PE misdiagnosis cases, reflecting the severity of outcomes when diagnosis is missed. A $7.55 million verdict was reached for failure to diagnose pulmonary embolism in a woman who presented with heart attack symptoms—a case where the confusion between cardiac and pulmonary conditions led to catastrophic delay. In another case, a California settlement reached $4 million after PE went undiagnosed for days, ultimately leading to fatal cardiac arrest. These verdicts underscore that when a preventable condition results in death, juries are prepared to award multimillion-dollar damages.
The damages awarded in these cases often include not just compensatory damages for medical expenses and lost wages, but also substantial sums for pain and suffering and, in some cases, punitive damages. A $9 million settlement that included punitive damages demonstrates that juries view some PE misdiagnosis cases as reflecting such serious breaches of duty that they warrant punishment beyond simple compensation. A $1.2 million settlement for PE following an outpatient surgical procedure shows that significant damages can be recovered even when the PE occurs in lower-acuity settings. These settlement amounts have made PE misdiagnosis a priority litigation category for plaintiff attorneys, as the combination of high mortality rates and clear standards of care create favorable conditions for successful claims.
Where PE Misdiagnosis Occurs and Why It Matters
Pulmonary embolism is frequently misdiagnosed as other common conditions, which explains why initial encounters sometimes fail to identify the true problem. PE is commonly confused with pneumonia, asthma, bronchitis, musculoskeletal pain (such as a pulled muscle), or anxiety. Each of these misdiagnoses can delay appropriate treatment by days or even weeks. A patient whose PE is initially attributed to anxiety, for instance, may be sent home with a benzodiazepine prescription and reassurance, only to deteriorate critically at home where prompt medical intervention is impossible.
The similarity between PE symptoms and these more benign conditions creates a dangerous cognitive bias where physicians anchor on the easier diagnosis and fail to consider the more serious one. The comparison between these misdiagnosis patterns and diagnostic standards reveals a clear tradeoff: quick reassurance versus appropriate caution. A physician who quickly diagnoses the patient’s chest pain as anxiety avoids unnecessary testing and reassures a frightened patient—an approach that feels like good medicine until it results in a missed PE. The pressure to avoid unnecessary imaging, especially in resource-constrained settings, can inadvertently create conditions where dangerous conditions are overlooked. Understanding this tension is critical because it explains why so many PE misdiagnoses involve well-meaning physicians who simply made the wrong judgment call under pressure.
The Role of Prior Surgery in PE Misdiagnosis Cases
A striking pattern in PE misdiagnosis litigation is the connection to recent surgery. Research found that 41% of PE cases in malpractice litigation involved prior surgery as the most common underlying etiology. This is particularly important because physicians should be hypervigilant about PE risk in post-surgical patients—the risk is well-established and foreseeable. When a patient develops shortness of breath, chest pain, or hemodynamic instability within days or weeks of surgery, PE should immediately be high on the differential diagnosis. Yet litigation data shows this obvious connection is frequently missed.
The failure to consider PE in post-surgical patients is especially egregious from a liability perspective because the risk is so well-established that missing it approaches indefensible negligence. A patient who developed PE symptoms after orthopedic surgery and was told the symptoms were musculoskeletal pain, anxiety, or post-operative normal, has a compelling malpractice claim. The standard of care clearly demands that post-surgical patients receive rapid evaluation for thromboembolism. When this standard is breached and PE results, the outcome is often fatal or severely disabling, leaving juries with sympathetic plaintiffs and clear breach of duty to find against the healthcare provider. This pattern explains why 16% of PE misdiagnosis defendants are orthopedic surgeons—they have high-risk patients under their care, yet may lack the urgency to pursue PE evaluation when symptoms develop.
Diagnostic Testing and When It Should Be Used
The diagnostic pathway for PE has become increasingly standardized, yet failures in execution remain common. When PE is suspected, physicians have reliable tools available: D-dimer testing, CT angiography, ventilation-perfusion scanning, and other imaging modalities. The challenge is not that diagnostic tools don’t exist, but that they are sometimes not ordered, are ordered too late, or are ordered but the results are not acted upon appropriately. A patient might receive a D-dimer test in the emergency department, show an elevated result, and then be discharged before CT angiography is completed—a sequence of events that leaves PE undiagnosed and untreated.
The failure to use available diagnostic testing represents a clear departure from standard of care. In a typical malpractice case, an expert physician will testify that any reasonable emergency medicine physician would have obtained a CT angiogram given the patient’s presentation and risk factors. When the defendant cannot show why they deviated from this standard, the case becomes very difficult to defend. A plaintiff attorney will emphasize that the diagnostic test would have found the PE, the patient would have received anticoagulation therapy, and the catastrophic outcome would have been prevented—a clear causal chain that juries find compelling.
The Future of PE Misdiagnosis Litigation
As medical knowledge becomes increasingly standardized and accessible through electronic health records, clinical decision support systems, and protocol-based care, the defense of PE misdiagnosis cases becomes progressively weaker. Modern hospitals have the capability to implement diagnostic protocols that flag high-risk patients and prompt providers to consider PE. When a healthcare system has this technology available but fails to use it, the negligence becomes even more apparent.
Future litigation will likely see more cases where the issue is not just that a physician missed PE, but that the system failed to provide decision support that could have prevented the miss. At the same time, the consistency of high settlement amounts and jury awards in PE misdiagnosis cases suggests this area of litigation will remain active. The facts are straightforward: PE is a known risk, diagnostic tools are available, standards of care are clear, and the outcomes of missed diagnosis are often fatal. This combination ensures that PE misdiagnosis will continue to generate significant malpractice claims and substantial damages awards for patients and families affected by preventable diagnostic failures.
Conclusion
Pulmonary embolism misdiagnosis lawsuits represent a critical area of medical malpractice litigation where the science is clear, the stakes are life-and-death, and the damages are substantial. With misdiagnosis rates exceeding 50% in some hospital settings, the gap between what should happen and what actually happens creates a fertile ground for litigation. The 277 documented PE-related malpractice cases, combined with verdicts and settlements regularly exceeding $4 million, demonstrate that juries take these failures seriously and hold healthcare providers accountable for missed diagnosis.
If you or a family member has experienced a delayed or missed PE diagnosis that resulted in serious injury or death, consulting with a medical malpractice attorney is an important step. These cases require expert medical testimony and careful analysis of whether the defendant’s actions fell below the standard of care, but the established nature of PE diagnosis and the severe consequences of missed cases make them among the most successfully litigated medical malpractice claims. A qualified attorney can evaluate whether you have a viable claim and help you pursue compensation for your losses.