Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Posted in Delay to Treat or Failure to Diagnose a Medical Condition

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Failure to diagnose or to treat priapism, a medical condition of prolonged penile erection that is unrelated to sexual stimulation, can result in serious complications such as permanent erectile dysfunction or disfigurement of the penis.  Priapism is not very common but as a result of the use of erectile dysfunction medication the potential for serious complications from Priapism is on the rise. Other medications such as intracavernosal agents, some antihypertensive agents , some psychotropic drugs, anticoagulants, cocaine, certain hormones, and ginkgo Biloba are also known to cause priapism. Diseases such as sickle cell disease can also cause this painful medical condition.

When a patient suffers from priapism it is crucial that the doctor determines if it is a case of ischemic or nonischemic priapism. Ischemic priapism is a medical emergency that requires immediate treatment. Usually the patient will receive an intracavernous injection of an alpha-adrenergic sympathomimetic agent followed by a surgical shunting procedure if necessary. Nonischemic priapism is not considered an emergency and will usually resolve by itself without treatment.

In its “Case of the Month” the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants looks at the case of a middle aged patient who was diagnosed with ischemic priapism associated with trazodone use. Read the complete article here

 

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imageFailure to diagnose or delay to treat herpes simplex in the eye area can result in serious personal injury such as episcleritis, keratopathy, iritis, blepharitis, conjunctivitis, uveitis, keratitis, retinitis, optic neuritis, glaucoma, proptosis, cicatricial lid retractions, and extraocular muscle palsies. In “case of the month: a lesion near the eye”, the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants looks at the case of a 19-year-old man  who visited his healthcare provider with erythema and irritation of the skin adjacent to his right eye. The patient  noted the irritation for the first time after a military exercise in a sandy environment. Read the case here 

 

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In 2001, Pam Tusiani died as a result of Medical Malpractice in New York  after she fatally  reacted to Parnate, an antidepressant she had been prescribed by a treatment center that was providing medical care without a license. The young woman was suffering from  borderline personality disorder, a disease often misdiagnosed.

Using the settlement from their malpractice suit, Pam’s parents started the Borderline Personality Disorder Resource Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital in 2003. Last July the Tusianis hosted some of New York’s top neuroscientists and psychiatrists at a day-long event to review the latest science on BPD and devise new avenues for research.

Read more in The Washington Post 

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CuomoThe law in New York State requires victims of medical malpractice to file their claim within 15 months after medical malpractice occurs at a public hospital and 2 1/2  years against a private hospital or physician. Lavern’s Law proposes to start the statute of limitations from the time a patient discovers the malpractice rather than from the time the medical malpractice occurs. Lavern’s Law is named after Lavern Wilkinson who died from a curable form of lung cancer after doctors at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, NYC, failed to tell her that a chest X-ray they took in 2010 showed a small, suspicious mass on her right lung and instead sent her back home with Motrin. Lavern only discovered that she had cancer when she was terminal. By that time, the statute of limitations had expired and she wasn’t able to sue the hospital for failure to diagnose lung cancer. She died leaving behind her a daughter who was severely autistic. The city settled Wilkinson’s lawsuit, for $625,000 the day she died, March 7, 2013. Medical malpractice experts said her case would have netted over $10 million had it not been for the statute of limitations. Yesterday Governor Cuomo gave his support to the law. Read more in the NY Daily News

 

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Failure to diagnose neurosarcoidosis can be medical malpractice that can drastically impair the quality of life of a person. In its “Case of the Month” , the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants (JAPA) discusses the case of a 68 year old woman who’s condition severely worsened after she was misdiagnosed. In 2011 the patient complained to her neurologist that she had difficulties walking. The neurologist’s diagnosis was normal pressure hydrocephalus and had a ventriculoperitoneal shunt placed to drain the increased Cerebrospinal fluid. The condition of the patient seemed to improve at the beginning but after two years the symptoms worsened and she developed double vision and couldn’t walk without a cane. The neurologist thought the problem was coming from the shunt and tried different adjustments that were unsuccessful.  The patient was using a walker and suffered from ataxia, weakness and increased urinary incontinence when she decided to consult with a neuromuscular clinic. The patient was diagnosed with a rare condition called neurosarcoidosis. The patient received cortocosteroids and her condition started to improve after 5 days.

Read the complete case in the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants (JAPA)

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cruise%20medical.jpgIn 2011, the family of 82 year old Pasqualre Vaglio from New York sued a cruise line for medical malpractice after the medical staff on board failed to diagnose a brain injury that would lead to the death of the man a few days later. Medical malpractice lawsuits against cruises have been for a long time impossible to win as cruise lines would use various exemptions created by previous court decisions. One of these exemptions known as “Barbetta” held in 1988 that passengers should not expect the same type of medical care on a ship as on land and ships’ doctors and nurses were private contractors beyond the cruise lines’ direct control. In the recent Vaglio case, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – which has jurisdiction over the major Florida-based cruise lines – recently held Barbetta is outdated law. The judges said that the doctors and nurses on the cruise line were wearing the cruise uniforms and were held out as ship employees in the promotional material of the cruise line. They also opined that cruise lines these days have sophisticated ICUs and laboratories. They can video conference with medical experts if necessary.

Read more in the New York Times

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Failure to diagnose Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) can be medical malpractice that can result in bloating, abdominal distention, abdominal pain and discomfort, diarrhea, fatigue and weakness. Complications of SIBO range from mild, including diarrhea and minimal vitamin deficiencies, to severe, including malabsorption and neuropathies due to fat-soluble vitamin deficiencies.

In a recent article in the Washington Post, Sandra G. Boodman, tells the story of a woman who struggled for more than 40 years with this condition. For years she was misdiagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome until she was referred to Gina Sam a gastroenterologist at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan and a specialist in motility disorders, problems that occur as food passes through the digestive tract. Because the woman didn’t suffer any pain which is a prominent symptom of Irritated Bowel Symptom, Dr. Sam suspected her patient was suffering from another condition. The doctor was able to properly diagnose her patient with SIBO, a condition that has received new attention as gastroenterologists have focused on the importance of the microbiome, the stew of bacteria and other microorganisms that comprises the gut’s ecosystem and is affected by diet.

Read the complete article here

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Heart failure is one of the main causes of senior hospitalizations. Failure to diagnose and treat heart failure timely can be fatal. A revolutionary device, the CardioMEMS implant has the potential to save the lives of many and 70 year old Eugene Santore from Queens, NYC, is the first patient to receive it.

When the first signs of hearth failure appear, the device, which monitors the pressure in the patient’s heart and transmits readings by email to the patient’s doctors, can be a life saver. Heart failure is often diagnosed too late because the patient doesn’t notice it until he or she experiences difficulty breathing because the high pressure has reached the lungs. This is the reason why so many heart failures are fatal.

The Cardiomems device is also very useful for doctors to adjust medication dosage, in the case of Eugene Santore, doctors have already adjusted his dosage of diuretics to help his body flush out excess water. Read more in the NY Daily News

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A diagnosis delayed by a too long wait time in an emergency room can be medical malpractice and can be deadly. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, patients checking in at the ER of the Brooklyn Interfaith Hospital wait an average of 125 minutes before they can be seen by a doctor. The hospital recently added more staff but it has financial struggles. Most of its ER patients are uninsured.

The Brooklyn Hospital has the worst ER waiting time in New York State and 4 times the national average according to an article in the New York Daily News.

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US%20ARMY%20MEDICAL.jpgSharon LaFraniere and Andrew W. Lerhen from the New York Times continue to investigate Medical Malpractice in military hospitals. The two reporters who last June provided an in-depth analysis of the flaws of the military hospital system (see “In Military Care, a Pattern of Errors but Not Scrutiny” ) recently published a new article focusing on the high risk of medical malpractice in small military hospitals. Military hospitals with a turnover of 10 to 30 patients a day are often staffed with inexperienced doctors and nurses who are not busy enough to keep their skills sharp. Most of them are poorly managed and run by untrained and inexperienced physicians with a culture of complacency that threatens patients safety.
Most of these small military hospitals are being considered for closing or transforming into outpatient facilities by the Pentagon as part of its plan to scale back costs but political obstacles are preventing streamlining the system.

Read the complete article here

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