Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Sepsis – the body’s ultimate response to a bacterial infection — is characterized by severe reaction of the body’s organs to the foreign bacteria and/or death. Sepsis is also referred to as systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS). Although sepsis often results from the widespread invasion of bacteria into a patient’s bloodstream, this invasion is not essential for the development of severe sepsis since local infection/inflammation can also cause distant organ dysfunction and blood pressure irregularities. Some of the common places in the body where an infection might start include the skin (celluitis), the lungs (bacterial pneumonia), liver, gall bladder, lining of the brain (meningitis), the bloodstream, the bones, the bowel, or the kidneys. For hospitalized patients, common sources of infections include bedsores (decubitus ulcers), surgical drains, intravenous lines, or surgical wounds. Unfortunately, bacteria live and breed in hospitalized settings, and thus, many healthy people who have suffered an injury requiring a drain, or IV lines or open ports into their blood stream often contract an infection that turns into sepsis.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Article posted on: 04/23/2008

Maryland personal injury lawyers are preparing for a potential class action law suit against a Maryland firm which owns the majority of Wisconsin based Scientific Protein Laboratories, Ltd., a Wisconsin-based company.

According to The Daily Record, the FDA sent Scientific Protein Laboratories a warning letter that its plant in China is believed to be producing the contaminated heparin. American Capital Strategies, located in Bethesda Maryland, owns 90% of the Wisconsin-based company. A Maryland class action law suit may be ripe against the Maryland based company based on deaths and injuries associated with the contaminated heparin. Maryland personal injury lawyers Silverman Thompson have served as local counsel for a major class action in the past and are currently accepting new clients who have been injured by the tainted heparin.

Heparin is used in dialysis and is also used to prevent clotting in catheters, which 25 percent of dialysis patients have to use for treatment. The drug is also commonly used in heart bypass surgery. As an anticoagulant, Heparin can be used to reduced the risk of blood clots before surgery.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Article posted on: 04/22/2008

According to the FDA, as many as 81 deaths in the United States and Germany have been linked to a man-made chemical ingredient of heparin called oversulfated condroitin sulfate (OSCS). Hundreds more may have been victims of adverse reactions to the tainted drug. In Maryland, health officials are monitoring the situation. The Maryland medical malpractice lawyers at Silverman Thompson will be evaluating contaminated heparin injuries for possible law suites arising from the negligence. Symptoms for those affected include difficulty breathing, nausea or vomiting, falling blood pressure, excessive sweating and life-threatening shock. Those who are using heparin and suffer these types of symptoms may be entitled to reimbursement for their medical expenses and additional damages from the drug companies.

Heparin is used in dialysis and is also used to prevent clotting in catheters, which 25 percent of dialysis patients have to use for treatment. The drug is also commonly used in heart bypass surgery. As an anticoagulant, Heparin can be used to reduced the risk of blood clots before surgery.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Article posted on: 04/16/2008 (subsequent reports in 2010 contradict this article)

According to U.S. regulators’ recent reports, the respiratory medicine Spiriva HandiHaler may increase the risk of stroke. As noted on Bloomberg.com, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a notice indicating that Spiriva was associated with two more cases of stroke in every 1,000 patients treated for one year compared with a placebo medicine in a pooled analysis of 13,500 patients. Spiriva is marketed by Boehringer, the world’s largest family owned drugmaker with Pfizer Inc., as a once-a-day inhaled treatment for breathing difficulty caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The Ingelheim, Germany-based company is assessing the long-term effects of the drug in a four- year study that is expected to report results in June, the FDA said. At that point, the FDA will review the report and make conclusions and recommendations to the public.

Subsequent to the release of these reports, in 2010, the FDA reversed its course, stating that the available data did not support an association between the Handihaler and increased risk of adverse events, i.e., stroke / heart attack. In fact, some recent studies have suggested that Spiriva might actually lower patients’ risk of heart problems and death. This is certainly good news for the medication’s manufacturers and product distributors given the world wide usage of the drug.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Article posted on: 04/08/2008

A Florida jury has ordered a hospital and gynecologist to pay $30 million for negligence that led to a 17-year-old boy’s physical and mental disabilities, including cerebral palsy. The jurors awarded $24 million in compensatory damages and $6 million in non-economic damages against Westside Regional Medical Center and Dr. Mark Grenitz. The verdict may be the largest ever awarded in a Broward County medical malpractice case.

Cerebral palsy is a complex medical condition that ranges in severity from mild to severe. Typically, those afflicted with cerebral palsy have an inability to control their motor function; i.e., they lack adequate muscle control and coordination. Common symptoms that can lead to a diagnosis of cerebral palsy include: involuntary movements of limbs; muscle spasticity (tightness), inability to walk properly (gait); seizures, breathing problems or difficulty swallowing; bladder and bowel continence issues; learning disabilities, and the impairment of one or more senses (sight, hearing, etc.). More severe cases may also result in a child having difficulty speaking.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Article posted on: 03/19/2008

A New Jersey jury has awarded more than $19 million in a medical malpractice case to a 10 year old boy who was disabled from birth. The money will allow the boy’s mother to pay for his care for the rest of his life, equip their home to accommodate his special needs and purchase a wheelchair-accessible van for his transportation. According to thesuit, the doctor initially misdiagnosed the mother, who was 30 weeks pregnant at the time, after she called him one evening complaining of abdominal pain. The doctor allegedly delayed in determining that the mother was hemorrhaging and had lost a massive amount of blood. The child eventually was delivered, had to be resuscitated and spent four months in intensive care. He suffers from severe brain damage, cerebral palsy and is legally blind.

Cerebral palsy is a complex medical condition that ranges in severity from mild to severe. Typically, those afflicted with cerebral palsy have an inability to control their motor function; i.e., they lack adequate muscle control and coordination. Common symptoms that can lead to a diagnosis of cerebral palsy include: involuntary movements of limbs; muscle spasticity (tightness), inability to walk properly (gait); seizures, breathing problems or difficulty swallowing; bladder and bowel continence issues; learning disabilities, and the impairment of one or more senses (sight, hearing, etc.). More severe cases may also result in a child having difficulty speaking.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Article posted on: 03/10/2008

A New Hampshire jury has awarded $1.75 million to a man who became blind after undergoing surgery to repair a broken leg. According to the lawsuit, the doctor failed to give the man blood to stabilize his condition following a car accident, causing nerve damage that blinded the man. Two other doctors who participated in the surgery were not found liable for the man’s injuries. Based upon the summary provided in the report, it was unclear as to what exactly caused the blindness.

The onset of blindness following surgery is, unfortunately, well documented. Two particular causes are well known. In the first circumstances, some patients experience a precipitous drop in their blood pressure while under anesthesia. This sudden drop in blood pressure, in turn, results in the deprivation of oxygen carrying red blood cells to the brain and the optic nerve (the nerve the connects the eye to the brain). If the deprivation of these oxygen carrying red blood cells persists for an extended period of time, cells within the nerves can die, resulting in blindness. In the second circumstance, a patient who is undergoing surgery may develop blindness if a piece of a blood clot, located elsewhere in the body, breaks off and travels toward the brain, lodging in a blood vessel that supplies the optic nerve. In such instances, the blood flow to the brain is interrupted and cell / nerve death can occur, causing blindness. In many instances, the clot can be identified on post-surgical imaging such as an MRI or CT scan with contrast of the brain. At STSW, our office has been involved in a similar case in which it was determined that the precipitous drop in blood pressure was the single cause of the subject blindness, a conclusion that could only be drawn after viewing the patient’s intraoperative blood pressure recordings that were made by the anesthesiologist.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Article posted on: 02/26/2008

As set forth recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association, if you are in the hospital and have cardiac arrest at night or on the weekend, you have a significantly lower chance of survival to discharge than if you had the arrest during day or evening times on weekdays.

Researchers suggest that patient, hospital, staffing, and response factors could come together to reduce the effectiveness of detecting and treating cardiac arrests at night. The findings are essential to inform decisions regarding hospital staffing, training, care delivery processes, and equipment – especially if in-hospital cardiac arrests are more frequent or survival is less likely on nights and weekends.

The study data consisted of 86,748 adult, in-hospital cardiac arrest events occurring at 507 medical/surgical hospitals from January 2000 to February 2007. All of the hospitals participate in the American Heart Association’s National Registry of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation. Researchers evaluated survival rates for adults with in-hospital cardiac arrest by time of day and day of week. They examined survival from cardiac arrest using the following definitions:

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Article posted on: 03/06/2008

On Monday, a Massachusetts jury ordered a surgeon to pay $14.5 million in damages to the husband of a woman who died following thyroid surgery. Jurors found that the doctor was responsible for the death and that another surgeon was negligent but not responsible for the death. The damages were comprised of past medical expenses, future loss of income and benefits and the pain and suffering associated with the death of his wife, along with the pain and suffering experienced by the woman prior to her death. It is believed that the verdict was among the highest in the state for this type of surgical procedure according to recent reports.

Complications following thyroid surgery include but are not limited to postoperative bleeding and swelling in the throat and neck area. Swelling can be particularly concerning because if it is caused by an unrecognized or rapidly expanding hematoma, it can cause airway compromise and asphyxiation. Following surgeries, imaging studies may be useful toward assessing whether neck swelling is caused by a hematoma or simply due to bruising around the area of surgery. Another common complication of thyroid surgery is known as current laryngeal nerve injury (RNL). This results in vocal fold paralysis – the inability to use one’s voice on a temporary or permanent basis. Because the laryngeal nerve is located in close proximity to the thyroid, surgeons must be particularly careful not to damage the nerve during surgery. When this injury occurs, hoarseness or breathiness typically manifests after the surgery in temporary injuries, whereas paralysis occurs immediately after the surgery. Injuries to the superior laryngeal nerve can also occur during the surgery, and is actually the most commonly injured nerve during thyroid surgery. Trauma to the nerve typically results in an inability to create a high-ptiched sound. Speech therapy is the only treatment that works. Yet another complication is known as hypoparathyroidism. Hypoparathyroidsm results from direct trauma to the parathyroid glands. Typically, patients who develop this type of injury following surgery require various types of therapies.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Article posted on: 03/03/2008

A woman with terminal breast cancer was awarded $12 million in damages from two doctors that allegedly failed to diagnose the disease until it was too late, a Pennsylvania jury ruled this past Wednesday. According to the lawsuit, the doctor missed several opportunities to report abnormalities that should have resulted in a diagnosis of breast cancer. Another doctor named as a defendant reached a confidential settlement prior to trial, according to an attorney for the woman.

As with most illnesses, early diagnosis of cancer is the best ammunition that a patient has toward defeating the disease. If, however, the cancer was missed by physicians for an appreciable amount of time or simply not timely diagnosed, a patient can face dire consequences. Sadly, these delays in diagnosis can result in more invasive treatment, extended physical and emotional heartache and even death. Most cancers are either graded or staged in terms of their severity. The lower the grade or stage (i.e., the earlier the diagnosis), the better a patient’s chances are of survival. Conversely, the higher the grade or stage, the worse a patient’s chances are of survival. Importantly, a delay in diagnosis can increase the likelihood that the tumor will metastasize (spread) to the lungs, thereby significantly decreasing a person’s chances of survival. In Maryland, failure to diagnose cases can only be pursued if the negligence caused the patient’s cancer to progress from a stage in which the patient had a probability of surviving the cancer if he or she received proper treatment to a circumstance in which they now face a probability of death due to the growth / spread of the cancer inside the body.

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