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 Tagged with medical malpractice

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African American Patient with DoctorsMedical Malpractice may have been committed on many American Africans who were previously diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.  A recent study found that some genetic variations that were linked to this condition were indeed harmless. These specific genetic variations were found more often in black Americans than in white Americans. Therefore many patients from African descent may have been misdiagnosed or are still being treated for a condition they don’t suffer from.

Also called, abnormally thick heart muscle, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a genetic disease that affects 1 out of 500 Americans. The disorder can cause arrhythmia and can be fatal. Symptoms may include chest pain, difficulty, breathing, fatigue and swelling in the ankles and feet. For a complete list and diagnostic testing see The American Heart Association web site. Sometimes there are no symptoms.

Abnormally thick heart muscle is diagnosed through genetic testing. A patient who tests positive for  the condition will often be required to change his or her lifestyle. These changes may include healthy diet, additional physical activities, losing excessive weight or stopping smoking. Patients diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy  are often prescribed specific medication to treat the condition.  Various types of surgeries are also commonly used as well as  alcohol septal ablation, a noninvasive procedure.

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Patient checked by doctorDischarging a patient too early can be hospital negligence that puts a patient at higher risk of readmission or death. An alarming new study shows that 1 out of 5 patients is released from the hospital before his vital signs are stable. The study released in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, was conducted by Dr. Oanh Nguyen (Assistant Professor Internal Medicine Department of Clinical Science), Dr. Anil Makam  (Assistant Professor Internal Medicine Department of Clinical Science) and Dr. Ethan A. Halm (Professor Internal Medicine Department of Clinical Sciences and Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine), all from the University of Texas (UT) Southwestern Medical Center.

Vital signs include:

  • temperature
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alcohol withdrawal symptoms vary depending on the level of addictionFailure to diagnose alcohol withdrawal symptom (AWS) can be medical malpractice that may cause severe injury or even death in some cases. The ECRI Institute  is looking at options to  better “Identify Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms Early and Ease Patients’ Care”.

An estimated 20 % of the patients that are admitted in US hospitals show symptoms of alcohol abuse or dependence. Those that are admitted for alcohol poisoning and detoxification may be difficult to treat but their alcohol withdrawal symptoms will usually be properly diagnosed and addressed.

Patients at a higher higher risk to be misdiagnosed for alcohol withdrawal symptoms are those who are admitted for a different medical condition than alcohol intoxication or dependence.

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newbornFailure to diagnose or delay to treat a bacterial infection in a newborn can be medical malpractice. Doctors (and also parents) may sometimes be reluctant to submit a young infant  to a lengthy and complicated process in order to  find out if a fever may  be caused by a bacterial infection. Thanks to new research this process may become much easier in the future.

Fever is usually one of the first symptom of a bacterial infection. However it can also be caused by other medical conditions. When a health care provider evaluates a young infant with fever and suspect an infection, there is no quick way to find out if the infant suffers from a bacterial infection. The actual method consists in isolating live bacteria from blood, urine or spinal fluid and grow a bacteria culture in a laboratory. This may require difficult and traumatizing medical procedures such as spinal tap. Additionally the  infant may necessitate hospital admission and an antibiotic prescription until the results of the tests are available.

A recent study that was published on Aug. 23, 2016 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that through advances in genetic sequencing technology it may soon be possible for doctors to diagnose bacterial infections in infants with fevers quickly and in a non invasive manner.  More work is needed but in the future only a small blood sample may be enough to immediately determine if an infant suffers or not from a bacterial infection.

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jbbr
Our law firm is pleased to announce that our attorneys Jeffrey Bloom and Ben Rubinowitz were successful in resolving the Joan Rivers Medical Malpractice case on behalf of her family. The amount is confidential.

Here is the statement from Melissa Rivers in regards to this settlement:

“In accepting this settlement, I am able to put the legal aspects of my mother’s death behind me and ensure that those culpable for her death have accepted responsibility for their actions quickly and without equivocation.  Moving forward, my focus will be to ensure that no one ever has to go through what my mother, Cooper and I went through and I will work towards ensuring higher safety standards in out-patient surgical clinics. I want to express my personal gratitude to my legal team for their wise counsel and prompt resolution of this case. ”

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medical-malpracticeIf you learn that your doctor was sued for medical malpractice, should you immediately change doctors? A recent article in Consumer Reports  explains how patients can find information about their doctor and what they should do about it.

Not every doctor who was sued for medical malpractice is a bad doctor.  Consumer Reports talked to Michelle M. Mello, a Professor of Law and of Health Research and Policy  at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Mello is an expert on the medical malpractice system, medical error and patient safety. She told Consumer Reports that very often medical malpractice lawsuits “are not the best indicator of substandard care” for several reasons.  For example:

  • The lawsuit may settle before a trial without the doctor admitting his error
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220px-Surgeons_at_Work251,000 people died from medical error in the US in 2013. This was the third highest cause of death that year  in the US after cancer (585,000) and heart disease (611,000) according to estimates calculated by Martin A Makary, professor and Michael Daniel, research fellow at the Department of Surgery of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21287, USA.

In a recent article published in the British Medical Journal, Martin Makary and Michael Daniel explain the difficulty of obtaining the exact numbers of people dying from medical malpractice in the US and how they “analyzed the scientific literature on medical error to identify its contribution to US deaths in relation to causes listed by the CDC“.

Every year the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  compiles data from death certificates to prepare statistics related to causes of death in the U.S. On death certificates the cause of the death is coded according to an International Classification of Disease (ICD). The CDC is using the ICD codes to prepare its yearly statistics but these codes do not capture human or system errors.  Deaths certificates from patients dying in hospitals will list a medical condition but not a medical error.

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prescription drugThe fear of providing lawyers with new weapons for medical malpractice lawsuits and the idea that the FDA wants to tell doctors how to practice medicine are among the many reasons why most physicians are still opposed to mandatory training for prescription of painkillers .  In 2012 a recommendation by an expert panel to implement such training was rejected by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The American Medical Association was also against the recommendation.

However since 2012 the opiate addiction problem in the US grew so big that the government is looking at all possible solutions to fight this crisis. The role of the doctor is again taking center stage as, Today and tomorrow, the FDA is convening a new panel of experts to discuss the possibility of mandatory training for physicians prescribing opiates (see briefing document for the meeting).

The Obama administration and even some drug manufacturers have now stated that they wareere in favor of such mandatory training but other organizations such as the American Medical Association Task Force to Reduce Prescription Opioid Abuse are still against it.

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surgeryToo many patients requiring complex surgery are suffering the devastating consequences of medical malpractice committed by inexperienced surgeons who negligently performed the surgery.  Some medical experts believe that there should be some type of legal way to prevent patients from undergoing high risk surgeries with inexperienced surgeons in hospitals that handle a low volume of patients. In a recent article in the Washington Post, Sandra G. Boodman writes about a long-running battle known as the volume-outcome debate among medical experts. This debate was recently re-activated by the decision of John Hopkins, Dartmouth-Hitchcock and University of Michigan to require surgeons practicing specific types of high risk surgery to meet an annual threshold to be able to perform the procedure.   In her article Boodman takes the example of a pancreatic cancer patient who suffered a botched Whipple surgery after an inexperience surgeon convinced him she could do it. The patient had to undergo another surgery where a surgeon specializing in Whipple surgery successfully treated him. Boodman also refers to several studies demonstrating that in cases of complex procedures patients undergoing surgery at hospitals with a high volume of these types of surgeries had a much lesser risk to die than those in hospitals performing a low volume of the same procedures. The author also discusses the difficulty for patients to find information about how many times the surgeon performed the risky procedure and what is his or her success rate is.

Read the complete article here

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Desmoid-type_fibromatosis.gross_pathology Although very rare, failure to diagnose and treat desmoids tumors, also called aggressive fibromatosis, a tumor that develops in the fibrous tissue that forms tendons and ligaments, can be medical malpractice. Desmoids tumors are very rare and difficult to diagnose and doctors are still debating what is the most appropriate categorization and treatment. In a recent article in the Washington Post, Sandra G. Boodman writes about a 24 year woman who suffered several episodes of excruciating stomach pain before being diagnosed and treated for a desmoid tumor.

Johanna Dickson was 23 years old when the first symptoms of the disease occured. She had just come back from South Africa when she suffered a first episode of acute abdominal pain. She thought she caught some type of stomach bug in her last trip. The family doctor sent her to the hospital for various tests but nothing was found and the pain disappeared.

Another crisis happened six months later but it went away quickly so she didn’t even bother to see a doctor.

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