Articles Posted in Emergency Room Malpractice

In late May of 2012, a 75 year-old woman presented to the hospital with a deep vein thrombosis blood clot in her leg.  She was treated and discharged days later with instructions to take blood thinners.  Less than a week after she was discharged, she awoke in the middle of the night with excruciating pain in the hip and groin area.  She was taken via ambulance to the hospital where she came under the care of two separate physicians over a period of ten hours during which time no diagnostic tests were ordered or performed.  She subsequently was discharged to a nursing home with a diagnosis of musculoskeletal pain which the physicians had attributed to the woman’s deep vein thrombosis blood clot a week earlier.

The majority of medical malpractice cases are litigated in the State Court where the malpractice is alleged to have occurred. When the healthcare facility where the malpractice allegedly occurred receives federal funding, the lawsuit usually is filed in Federal Court where it is defended by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. That is what occurred in recent case that resulted in a $9 million award to the surviving family members of a 40 year old mother of six who lost her own life and that of her unborn child at a Chicago hospital.

This month, a Carroll County jury awarded $570,000 to the estate and surviving family members of a woman whose internal bleeding went undiagnosed, resulting in her untimely death.

A jury in Washington State has awarded more than $1.5 million dollars to a carpenter and his wife after a physician failed to timely diagnose the 56 year-old man’s compartment syndrome. Compartment syndrome is a condition in which swelling compresses muscles, nerves and blood vessels within an area of the body, restricting the flow of oxygen which in turn destroys nerves and muscles. It was the plaintiffs’ position that compartment syndrome must be addressed within six hours of injury to optimize the outcome of the patient.

A Philadelphia jury last week awarded more than $10 million to a now-six year-old boy and his family against a hospital and its physicians who delayed significantly in diagnosing the child’s bacterial meningitis.

Lithium is an often-prescribed psychiatric medication used to treat select health conditions such as bipolar disorder and depression. Doctors have long understood that extended lithium intake can have long-term side effects most often effecting the kidneys and thyroid gland. Specifically, lithium can reduce the ability of the kidneys to concentrate urine, leading to dilution and polyuria (excessive urination). Lithium is not metabolized and is excreted almost exclusively through the kidneys. Monitoring kidney function is therefore an essential component of ongoing lithium therapy.

Tragically, a medical condition or injury sometimes results in death for too many individuals, particularly young children. This is a loss that no parent should have to experience in his or her lifetime. Often, there is nothing that can be done to prevent these tragedies. However, there are occasional incidents in which a child’s death could have been prevented, but wasn’t. In these situations, errors by medical professionals and hospitals are crucial and sometimes may be the bases for medical malpractice lawsuits. Medical malpractice suits function to hold these professionals and hospitals accountable when they fail to meet the appropriate standards of care and injury or death results. Medical malpractice can take many forms, including a misdiagnosis. Recently, this prompted a medical malpractice lawsuit by a Dallas couple whose six-year-old boy died after treatment by an emergency physician at a Texas medical center. A copy of the article regarding the recent medical malpractice case can be found here.

A Massachusetts jury recently has found that a doctor at a hospital in Boston was guilty of medical malpractice that caused the sudden death of a 23-year-old man, and awarded the family $4.8 million in the medical malpractice case.

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for doctors and hospitals to misdiagnose a stroke in a younger person. Many people think that strokes only happen to older people. In reality, doctors around the world treat otherwise healthy people in their 30s, 40s and 50s who have had strokes, sometimes totally out-of-the-blue.