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 Medical Malpractice

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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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Failure to diagnose a medical condition can be medical malpractice. However in some rare cases patients can suffer from unknown conditions that even the the most skilled doctors have failed to diagnose despite extensive clinical investigations. These patients now have a new possibility to submit their case to  the some of the nation’s leading diagnostic teams. The Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) just launched an  online application portal that will allow patients suffering from a rare undiagnosed disease to submit an application to get their case studied by a top national network of clinical sites. Read more here

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imageHospital medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death in this country, behind heart disease and cancer.

In a recent article in the New York Times, a retired transplant surgeon explains how an unresponsive medical staff left him no other choice but to break into  into the crash cart, a box on wheels containing equipment hospitals use to resuscitate patients and pull out two liters of saline solution which he ran into his daughter’s IV Line to prevent her from dying.

Unfortunately most patients and their families don’t have the medical knowledge and the means to make things different if the staff is negligent or a medical error is being committed. Here are the reactions of some of the readers to this article.

 

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Jeffrey BloomOur Partner Jeffrey Bloom will be a speaker at the “Mount Sinai Update: Breast Imaging Conference” to be held at The New York Academy of Medicine  on October 12, 2015 .  Jeff will speak from 10:15 AM to  11:15 AM and his presentation will cover the plaintiff’s attorney’s perspective on breast imaging malpractice.  After the presentation Jeff will also participate on a Medico-legal Issues Panel. To register click here.

At the completion of this course, the participants should be able to:

  • Discuss the new ACR BI-RADS 5th Edition terminology for breast imaging findings on mammography, ultrasound and MRI.
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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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Jail MedicineMedical malpractice and negligent care to inmates is the subject of a new article in Fair Warning.  The author, Brian Joseph, looks at various cases of inmates who have died as the result of medical negligence committed by private companies that provides correctional medical services. Some of these companies have been expanding at a fast pace all over the nation despite controversy over inmate deaths. The author also looks at the history of health services to jails and prisons from the 1970’s when wardens and sheriffs lacking medical expertise started to ask for the help of private medical providers until today when private companies have taken over most of the prison healthcare system and put profit over inmates health care.

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baby in hospitalTo precribe Proglycem (diazoxide) to a baby with risk factors for pulmonary hypertension can be medical malpractice leading to severe personal injury.  FDA MedWatch, the FDA Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Program recently released a drug safety communication to warn that 11 cases of pulmonary hypertension in infants and newborns treated with diazoxide, the active ingredient in Proglycem, have been indentified since the drug was launched in 1973. The drug is usually used in hospital setting after the birth of the baby.

Doctors should not prescribe this drug to babies suffering from meconium aspiration syndrome, respiratory distress syndrome, transient tachypnea of the newborn, pneumonia, sepsis, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, and congenital heart disease.

Babies with no risk factor for pulmonary hypertension should be closely monitored as well. Parents and caregivers should look for signs of difficulty breathing such as flaring nostrils, grunting, unusual movement of their child’s chest, rapid breathing, difficulty feeding, or a bluish color of the lips. They should stop the medication and contact their doctor immediately if they see any of these signs.

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BriefingBook_SiteBriefing Book: Medical Malpractice by the Numbers is a yearly compilation by the Center for Justice and Democracy  of all recently published statistics and research related to Medical Malpractice in the US. The Briefing book cover Medical Malpractice Litigation, Health Care Costs and “Defensive Medicine” , Tort Reform, Medical Malpractice Insurance,  Patient Safety and a special chapter related to Army Medicine.

Medical Malpractice Litigation

Recent studies added to the briefing book confirm that a very low percentage of individuals are filing claims or lawsuits when medical malpractice is being committed against them or a family member. A 2014 analysis of National Practitioner Data Bank(NPDB) by Public Citizen indicates that between 93 and 98 percent of deaths from medical negligence did not result in any liability payment. Compared to 2001, the year in which the most medical malpractice payments were made, the number and size of medical malpractice claims, lawsuits and payments stayed at an historical low in recent years.  Most of the compensation theses days is made for serious personal injury or wrongful death and high verdicts are almost always reduced.

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Face InjectionsThe FDA is warning that in rare cases  unintentional injections of soft tissue fillers into blood vessels in the face can block blood vessels and restrict blood supply to tissues and in the worst cases result in embolization. The filler could travel to another part of the body and could cause vision impairment, blindness, stroke and damage and/or death of the skin (necrosis) and underlying facial structures.

Soft tissue fillers are mostly use by dermatologists and cosmetic surgeons to reduce the appearance of wrinkles or to augment cheeks or lips. Ophthalmologists, neurologists, and neurosurgeons also use them for other medical procedures.

If you are considering injecting soft tissue fillers in your face, make sure that your health care provider is board certified, has appropriate training and experience and is knowledgeable about the anatomy at and around the injection site.

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Unfortunately many doctors are not very good at communication with their patients and to protect themselves from medical malpractice, they increase the number of office visits and perform additional but often unnecessary procedures and tests. They call it “defensive medicine” but according to a recent article in the New York Times written by Aarron E. Carroll, a professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine, all these extra precautions don’t reduce the risk of being sued. Better communication with the patients does. Previous studies and statistics clearly demonstrate that doctors who are willing to change their behavior and become better communicators will significantly decrease their risk of being sued for medical malpractice. Read the complete article