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 Surgical Errors & Complications

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surgery-centerTwo recent articles discuss the increased risks of medical practice at surgery centers as they take on increasingly risky surgeries.

A global investigation by Christina Jewett from Kaiser Health News and Mark Alesia from USA Today reveals that since 2013, 260 people died of complications after they went for an in-and-out procedure at a surgery center in America.

Another investigation led by Lindy Washburn from NorthJersey.com found that more than 12,000 serious cases of personal  injury including 52 deaths have occurred in New Jersey surgery centers between September 2008 and September 2017. Additionally Washburn also found out that these numbers were only reflecting a partial reality as among the 298 surgery centers installed in New Jersey only half of them have to report to NJ’s Patient Safety Reporting System. In New Jersey surgical centers with only one room don’t need to report their patient safety data. Previous cases of medmal indicate that some victims died in the past but exact numbers are nowhere to be found. In her article Washburn describes several cases including the one of  Rekhaben Shah, a 67 year old woman who went to one of these centers for a routine colonoscopy and died two days later. A new law was just passed that will soon require all New Jersey surgical centers to report patients safety data.

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New York Medical Malpractice Lawyer Ben RubinowitzOur partner, Ben Rubinowitz, a nationally regarded plaintiff’s lawyer, recently lectured at the Winter Urologic Forum sponsored by Columbia University, Vanderbilt University, and University of California Davis.

One of the main topics in his talk focused on the issue of Concurrent Surgeries, or what is commonly referred to as Simultaneous Surgeries.  Although many teaching hospitals throughout the country participate in this practice, Rubinowitz made clear that it is not in the best interests of the patient to have the doctor leave the operating room while treating one patient to attend to another.

Although the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently suggested that Concurrent Surgeries were safe for patients, Rubinowitz challenged that study.

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Bronx Lebanon covering fro medical malpracticesNew York orthopedic surgeon Ira Kirshenbaum was sued 10 times for medical malpractice and 4 of his patients died after undergoing surgery with him. This hasn’t stop Bronx-Lebanon Hospital to keep him as the head of orthopedic surgery since 2008 and to pay him $1 million-a-year and additional bonuses since that time.

Bronx-Lebabanon treats mostly poor patients on Medicaid and executives seem more concerned by the hefty bonuses they receive every year than by patient care. Hospital executives don’t seem to be too concerned if patients die after surgery or if they come out of  the hospital with one leg shorter than the other.

When they hired Kirshenbaum, Bronx-Lebanon executives main concern was how much additional money they could put in their pocket.  By hiring Kirschenbaum the hospital would increase the number of hip and knee replacements which are very lucrative procedures.

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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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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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Potential medical malpractice during a routine procedure for her vocal cords may have lead to the death of Joan Rivers earlier Today. A few days ago we wrote that the 81 year old comedian and TV personality had to be rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York after she stopped breathing during vocal cord surgery (see previous blog). After doctors at Mount Sinai tried unsuccessfully to bring her out of her coma, her daughter Melissa gave the go-ahead to remove her mother from life support Today. RIP Joan Rivers. New York state health officials are investigating the outpatient clinic where Joan Rivers underwent the endoscopic procedure before she stopped breathing last week. It will be interesting to learn the role anesthesia played in leading to her respiratory distress and cardiac arrest. She was a ground breaker and will be missed.
Read more in the Daily Beast

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Famous comedian Joan Rivers suffered a cardiac and respiratory arrest while she was undergoing an operation for a vocal cord at a clinic located at 201 E. 93rd St in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital. According to the comedian’s assistant Joan Rivers was not conscious but was stable. The latest news is that she is now resting comfortably.
Read more in the NY Daily News

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Liliana Coello a phony doctor from Queens, NYC, pleaded guilty of unlawfully practicing medicine and seriously injuring a patient. She was sentenced to two years in jail. Coello gave a botched butt lift to a patient and injected her buttocks with Krazy Glue in a follow up visit. The patient suffered a very bad infection and had to be hospitalized 3 times.

This is not the first time Coello is being sent to jail for a botched butt lift. In 2012 the phony doctor got paid $3200 for surgery on the derriere of a Brooklyn night club worker during which she injected the woman with clear gel.

Read more in the NY Daily News

 

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Dr Oleg Davie, A Brooklyn surgeon whose patient died during a botched liposuction procedure will go to jail for two months and will be on probation for 5 years.
A medical examiner changed the manner of death from “undetermined” to “homicide (physician negligence)” after speaking with Brooklyn prosecutors, court records show.

Read more in the New York Daily News

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Getting cheap cosmetic surgery in a foreign country can be risky. Medical malpractice such as surgical errors and hospital negligence have a higher risk of happening in foreign hospitals because medical standards are lower than in the US. Recently, a young New York woman who decided to go to The Dominican Republic to get a cheaper tummy tuck and liposuction died from a massive pulmonary embolism on the operating table.

Beverly Brignony was 28 years old. She was married and had a 4 year old daughter. She had gastric bypass surgery a year earlier and since she had lost 80 pounds. she was very excited about getting a tummy tuck and liposuction her friends said.

Because her flight was delayed, she arrived at The Dominican Republic Hospital late at night before the surgery started early the next morning. She may not have received a proper medical evaluation before the surgery and the medical staff may not have taken into account the higher risk of embolism related to the fact that she sat on a plane for several hours before the surgery.