Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog

A jury has recently awarded $5.8 million to the family of a man when a hospital’s medical malpractice led to amputation of his leg below the knee. The man, a diabetic with poor circulation, went to the hospital with a broken ankle. Doctors, at that time, decided to wait for the swelling to go down before operating. However, when the swelling had not gone down a week later, doctors failed to inform the man of the increased risks of surgery. The surgery on the diabetic man’s swollen ankle led to complications: the swelling worsened and his leg developed a large amount of drainage. The leg eventually became gangrenous and had to be amputated. The man died earlier this year from an unrelated heart attack.

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The parents of a suicidal 20 year-old woman have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the sheriff, deputies, and county. The 20 year-old woman was shot to death by County deputies two years ago. The plaintiffs contend that the deputies should have approached their daughter with tasers, not guns. The wrongful death lawsuit blames a lack of training for the deputies’ actions that left the 20 year-old woman dead in her bedroom some 23 second after deputies arrived.

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A jury awarded a family of a victim of medical malpractice $1 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit. The victim in the lawsuit was an 84 year-old man who died from infected pressure sores. One pressure sore was so advanced that it went to the bone.

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Pregnant women who have previously given birth by C-section are having more difficulty finding doctors who will allow them to give birth vaginally. A growing medical community is rethinking policies around vaginal births after C-sections because it carries a risk of uterine rupture or a bursting of the C-section scar.

Doctors also are fearful of medical malpractice lawsuits in the small percentages of cases that go bad. Some doctors opine that the liabilities are too great to perform such procedures.

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Kanye West’s mother, Donda West, died after two cosmetic surgery procedures performed by a California doctor. While Kanye West and his family mourn the death of his mother, Donda West, a lot of attention is focusing on the reputation of Donda West’s doctor who performed the operation. The Medical Board of California is investigating whether the doctor’s license should be revoked or suspended. The doctor had been arrested twice in the last four years for alcohol-related offenses. Additionally, the doctor paid two former patients a total of $467,337 in two medical malpractice lawsuit settlements in 2001.

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A jury recently awarded a couple $3 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit. The jury found a physician’s assistant to be negligent in their treatment of the victim. The 61 year-old woman sought treatment for severe headaches and was treated by the physician’s assistant. The physician’s assistant prescribed pain medication without antibiotics. The infection progressed into the 61 year-old’s brain causing a severe abscess. She can no longer work as a real estate agent and has several neurological problems because of the medical malpractice.

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The husband of a 23 year-old woman who died at the Naval Medical Center has filed a $5 million medical malpractice lawsuit and wrongful death lawsuit against the Naval Medical Center claiming medical staff misdiagnosed a urinary tract infection that led to the victim’s death. The 23 year-old woman died of heart failure three days after she was sent home from the Medical Center with a diagnosis of muscle spasms. The couple had been married just five months before the woman’s death.

When the woman went to the Medical Center, a nurse ordered a urinalysis and a pregnancy test. A physician’s assistant saw the victim and diagnosed her with muscle spasms. The physician’s assistant then discharged her without waiting for the results of the urine test.

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A 51 year-old woman recently learned that health insurance may fall through just when you need it the most. The 51 year-old was about to undergo a lump-removal surgery for a cancerous tumor in her breast when a hospital administrator entered and told her that the procedure had been cancelled because her insurance would not pay. The woman is now seeking $6 million in compensation from the insurance company.

The Executive Director of the Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights says that health insurance is like property insurance. Health insurance has a “use it and lose it” policy. If you file two claims, you lose your insurance. The insurance company, Health Net Inc., has recently fined by the state in the amount of one million dollars about misleading investigators about its goal-setting policies. An investigation about cancellation practices has also begun.

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Earlier this week, actor Dennis Quaid’s newborn twins were victims to medical malpractice. The twins received an overdose of Heparin, an anti-coagulant provided to reduce the amount of blood clots. Babies are routinely given 10 units, but the twin children were each given 10,000 units last Sunday. The babies began bleeding out and are now reported to be in stable condition after receiving a drug that reverses the effects of Heparin.

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Last week, a Cook County Circuit Court Judge declared that a 2005 law that placed a $500,000 cap on noneconomic damages such as pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases was unconstitutional. The case is now poised to be reviewed by the Illinois Supreme Court, but this review could take several months to over a year.

This is an overdue and welcome ruling because tort caps are unfair to medical malpractice victims.

For articles on the ruling.
The Quincy Whig
Injuryboard.com
Belleville News-Democrat

Over 628 patients were notified by state officials that they should be tested for HIV and Hepatitis. They were all patients of the same doctor who, between 2000 and 2005, used unsafe practices in the administration of drugs by injection. Although the doctor was correctly used a different needle each time, the doctor should also have been using a different syringe for each drug administered. By using only one syringe per patient, this created the potential for the spread of blood-borne illnesses. The doctor’s actions were not discovered until two of his patients recently contracted Hepatitis C.

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A medical malpractice lawsuit has recently been filed on the behalf of an imprisoned man who was misdiagnosed and is permanently disfigured as a result. The inmate's pleas for medical attention relating to an infected hemorrhoid were ignored until his pain was unbearable, his genitals swollen, he was bleeding from the rectum, had a rash on his torso and had a fever. The prison doctor diagnosed him as having an allergic reaction. As the man's fever rose and blisters developed on his skin, the doctor issued a pain reliever and a prescription steroid that lowers immune system capabilities. When the man was taken to the hospital after his symptoms continued to worsen, he was immediately diagnosed with Fournier's gangrene, a type of necrotizing fasciitis that kills about a fourth of the people who get it. The editor of Prison Legal News in Seattle called it, "the most outrageous case of medical neglect in a prison or jail... I've seen where the patient lived." The 60-year-old man is disabled and deformed after six pounds of flesh were removed from his pelvis, he lost one testicle and had his penis reconstructed.

Continue reading "Med mal lawsuit filed by deformed man misdiagnosed by prison doctor" »

A jury awarded $3.5 million in non-economic damages for a hospital’s medical malpractice in failing to provide supplemental oxygen to a pneumonia patient. In the wrongful death lawsuit, the family of the deceased, mentally disabled man blamed the hospital for failing to administer proper respiratory care, to monitor his heart rate, and to monitor the frequency of his respirations. As a result, his body was deprived of oxygen, his heart became overworked, and he ultimately died.

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The family of a woman who died while Illinois doctors were operating to replace a part of a pacemaker settled their medical malpractice lawsuit for $750,000. The woman had been treated for a heart condition at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, but she died when surgeons tore her heart in trying to replace the pacemaker part. The woman was 49 years old.

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Cook County Judge Diane Larsen ruled on Tuesday that the Illinois laws that cap recovery for non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases are unconstitutional. The laws, which limited awards for non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering, mental anguish, and disfigurement, were stricken as a violation of the Illinois Constitution’s separation of powers requirement. Because the caps on was improperly taking the award decision out of the hands of juries and putting it into the hand of legislators, Judge Larsen ruled that the law was an improper exercise of State legislative power.

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Surgery poses many risks. One, flash fires, has recently been shown to be more common than previously thought. In one of the states with the most comprehensive collection of statistics, 28 fires a year in operating rooms has been the average over the last three years. Medical malpractice lawsuits have not been uncommon results of surgical fires. Fires in operating rooms have not gained as much attention as other surgical hazards, such as wrong-site surgery, but these fires have proven themselves dangerous by causing serious injuries and deaths. One of the most fatal surgical fires occurs during throat surgery. Common fire hazards in todays operating rooms include the use of 100% oxygen, which can increase the flammability of gauze and hair when leaked into the air; alcohol-based skin cleansers; and the increasing use of advanced surgical tools like lasers and electrocautery devices. One of the most commonly cited causes of surgical fires is poor communication between surgeons, nurses and anesthesiologists. Prevention policies have been on the rise as more oversight groups have recommended them.

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Unintended intraoperative awareness, also called anesthesia awareness, is a well-documented risk of surgery. A study published in the Anesthesia & Analgesia Journal concluded that about 0.13% of patients experience anesthesia awareness during surgery. One woman recently filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against her doctor for an experience that she claims was unintended intraoperative awareness. The woman said that she was paralyzed during an operation on her sinuses, but was conscious and able to feel pain. She also claims that the experience left her with posttraumatic stress disorder. Both sides in the trial concluded that the patient did display symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, but claimed that what caused it was different. The anesthesiologist argued that the consciousness the woman recalled was not during the surgery itself, but that it was during the recovery period. While there is no dispute that anesthesia awareness occurs, the jury ruled that the patient in this case was not conscious until after the surgery had been performed. The woman stated that although she did not win her lawsuit, she will work to spread the word about anesthesia awareness and the technology that can be, but is not, regularly used to monitor brain activity to prevent the experience.

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Foreign drug company Bayer AG, has pulled Trasylol from U.S. shelves. Trasylol has been used to reduce blood loss for patients undergoing by-pass surgery and avoid transfusions. The drug was pulled amid concerns that it may be linked to a higher risk of death than other drugs. So far, no major lawsuits have been filed.

The FDA announced it would review Trasylol last month after a clinical experiment was halted when the drug appeared to be linked to a higher risk of death. There was also a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in January of last year which advised against continued use of the drug because of the risk of kidney failure, and increased risk of heart attacks, heart failure and strokes.

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Recently, the Loyola University Health System and three Chicago area VA Hospitals have joined Evanston Northwestern Healthcare in being the only Chicago area hospitals to implement universal screening procedures in effort to fight the spread of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, otherwise known as MRSA. This infection cannot be controlled by standard antibiotics and is potentially fatal. Center for Disease Control statistics indicate that 94,000 people contract the infection per year with 19,000 of those cases resulting in death. The new procedures require a nasal swab of every newly admitted patient. If the patient tests positive for MRSA or is otherwise a carrier for the infection, the patient will be put in a private room where medical personnel will be required to adhere to stricter standards of cleanliness and cross-contamination prevention.

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