Baby diagnosed with a sprain had actually suffered a stroke

An Ontario mother says she had to take her baby to three different hospitals, and speak with six doctors in less than a week, to get an accurate diagnosis after he was injured in a fall.

"It's been traumatizing and it still haunts me," Sana Tayab-Mohammad, 34, told Go Public.

Her son Uzair, 11 months old at the time, was twice diagnosed with a sprained arm. In fact, he'd had a stroke and was suffering from partial paralysis.  

Tayab-Mohammad says she understands it's highly unusual for a baby to have a stroke, but believes doctors should have seen that the baby's condition couldn't be the result of a simple sprain. 

"His left side was not functioning at all. His head was tilted to the left," she said. "He had little movement in his arm, his left hand was clenched, and his left leg and foot had little movement."

Studies show misdiagnosis affects 10 to 15 per cent of people who arrive at hospital emergency departments, according to an emergency room doctor who has studied and written a book about diagnostic failure. Dr. Patrick Croskerry, who teaches at the Dalhousie School of Medicine in Halifax, says the most common ailments likely to be misdiagnosed in ERs are heart attacks, sepsis and stroke. 

Doctors have been known to conclude such patients are suffering from minor problems and send them home, telling them to follow up with their family doctor, or return to the ER if there's a significant change, he says. 

Croskerry expects the pandemic has made misdiagnosis more likely. 

"People are working extraordinarily hard every day, and we know from the cognitive sciences literature that when people work hard, their decision-making is compromised," he told Go Public. He expects studies will be done once the COVID-19 crisis is over, to calculate the impact on emergency rooms. He said a negative effect seems "inevitable," due to the additional workload and stress created by the pandemic.

"Talking to colleagues, it is clear that everyone is expecting it," he said.

The Mohammad family's disturbing experience began during a visit to Ajax, Ont., on Aug. 28. The baby was crawling and tried to sit up, but fell backward and hit his head on the floor.

Shortly after, the parents noticed the problems with his left side. They rushed him to nearby Lakeridge Health Ajax Pickering Hospital, where an emergency room doctor diagnosed a sprain. 

Two days later, the baby's health hadn't improved. "He wasn't eating. He wasn't playing. His behaviour was down and there was still no movement on his left side," his mother said.

They took Uzair to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, where again, a sprain was diagnosed.