Articles Posted in Cardiovascular Surgery Errors

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The Illinois Appellate Court found that Advocate Christ Hospital should not have been dismissed from a wrongful-death lawsuit that involved pediatric cardiovascular surgeon Mary Jane Barth, M.D. The issue in the case was whether Advocate Christ Hospital could be held as the principal for the apparent agency of a doctor who practices there. The hospital argued that Dr. Barth was an independent contractor and thus, the plaintiff could not hold the hospital liable as the principal for any wrongful conduct of an agent (a doctor).

The First District Illinois Appellate Court found it was reasonable for the plaintiff, Natalie Hammer, to assume Dr. Barth was acting on behalf of Advocate Christ Hospital when she performed a number of operations on her husband, Jerry Hammer, who died in 2010.

Natalie Hammer filed a lawsuit against Advocate, Barth and Barth’s employer, Cardiovascular Surgeons Ltd. (CSL) for medical malpractice and wrongful death. The three-justice appellate court panel found that Advocate Christ Hospital could be held liable because Hammer demonstrated that Advocate did not carefully distinguish between itself and its independent doctors and that Hammer relied on Advocate to care for her husband.

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Mr. Doe, who was in his 60s, was admitted to a hospital for heart surgery. While he was recovering, healthcare personnel placed multiple lines in his body, including a central venous pressure catheter, which was replaced with a peripherally inserted central catheter line.

After Mr. Doe returned to his home, he began to experience chest pain and persistent arrhythmia. Arrhythmia is sometimes referred to as a malfunction of the heart’s electrical system. It occurs when the heart beats irregularly or improperly, meaning it beats too fast or too slow. The symptoms continued.

Mr. Doe then underwent testing over two years to determine the cause. A chest X-ray later revealed that his symptoms resulted from the presence of a foreign body. He underwent surgery to remove a fragment of a triple lumen catheter. Continue reading

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Shronda Thomason suffered from a cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle, which necessitated the implanting of a defibrillator. The treating cardiologist, Dr. John Gallagher, advised Thomason that she required a new pacemaker battery and the replacement of the defibrillator’s lead.

During the surgery, which was done in a hospital catherization lab, Thomason sustained a puncture and hole in her superior vena cava of her heart. Clearly, the hole resulted in profuse and immediate bleeding from that area of the heart. Dr. Gallagher called for a cardiothoracic surgeon to assist. Thomason was placed on cardiovascular bypass about an hour and a half later. By then, it was too late.

Because Thomason suffered excessive bleeding, she died. Thomason was a property specialist earning more than $50,000 annually and was survived by her four children, one of whom is a minor.

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Kevin Tolson was 49 years old when he was injured as the collapsible barrier he was walking over suddenly shot upward, entangling him. He was taken to the nearby hospital emergency room where he experienced symptoms, which included a cold left foot that he was unable to move, numbness and tingling in the foot as well as severe pain. X-rays were completed and a physician assistant diagnosed knee strain and released Tolson from the hospital with instructions to see an orthopedic surgeon.

When Tolson’s symptoms persisted, he consulted a local doctor who detected low pulse in his leg and instructed him to return to the hospital. An MRI revealed that all of the ligaments in Tolson’s left knee were damaged. Despite surgery, Tolson’s leg had to be amputated above the knee. He had been a security guard working two jobs at about $20 an hour, but is now able to hold only one position due to his medical condition.

Tolson sued the physician assistant and emergency room physician at the hospital and also named the hospital as a party defendant. It was alleged in the lawsuit that these medical providers chose not to diagnose a popliteal artery injury. Tolson claimed that based on his symptoms and the x-rays that were taken at the emergency room a dislocation and possible vascular injury could not be ruled out.

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A Cook County jury found that no medical negligence that caused the death of Jerome Granat following a cardiac catherization. On June 16, 2010, the defendant cardiologist, Dr. Surendra Avula, performed a cardiac catherization procedure on 64-year-old Granat at Advocate Christ Hospital. The patient’s previous cardiac history included quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery in 1994, three stents put in place in 2002 and 2007 and one heart attack, but he still had normal heart function and was in reasonably good health at the time of this procedure.

Dr. Avula, the head of the cardiac cath lab at Christ Hospital, found 99% blockage in Granat’s old bypass vein graft, requiring a new stent; however, the old graft ruptured when the stent was inserted.

Despite emergency surgery, Granat suffered brain damage and died 2 weeks later. He had recently retired and was survived by his wife and three adult children. The family filed a lawsuit against Dr. Avula and his practice maintaining that he selected a stent that was too large (4 mm instead of 3.5 mm), that he improperly responded to the graft rupture and that he should have re-inserted a balloon to stop the bleeding rather than transferring the patient for emergency cardiovascular surgery.

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Margaret Brown, a 71-year-old retiree, was admitted to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Belleville, Ill., in October 2002 to undergo a coronary artery bypass surgery. During the initial stages of the bypass surgery, Brown suffered a pulmonary artery injury. It was claimed in the lawsuit that the artery injury was caused by the insertion of a Swan-Ganz catheterization.

The Swan-Ganz catheter is commonly used by passing a thin tube, which is the catheter, into the right side of the heart and the arteries leading to the lungs to monitor the heart’s blood flow or output during the surgery. The Swan-Ganz catherization is also used to inform doctors and surgeons of an abnormal blood flow. Its use is standard operating procedure for monitoring patient heart and blow flood output in invasive heart surgeries.

In this lawsuit, the family of Margaret Brown maintained that the use of the Swan-Ganz catheter was the cause of her death on Oct. 28, 2002. The family alleged that the defendant anesthesiologist, Dr. Daniel Gillen, was responsible. Their claim was medical battery in that the doctor chose not to obtain consent for the use of the Swan-Ganz catheter by the patient before the beginning of the surgery. Medical battery is a legal cause of action where the medical provider is claimed to have treated the patient without the patient’s consent.

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A Cook County jury was deadlocked after four days of deliberation in a case in which the plaintiff claimed she underwent an unnecessary coronary bypass surgery. Maryann Giannetti was 52 years old when she underwent a stress test at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago. She claimed she was suffering “vague” chest tightness on Aug. 14, 2006. During the stress test, she experienced ventricular tachycardia, which can be potentially fatal because of the irregular heartbeat or arrhythmia. She experienced this condition while on a treadmill. A coronary angiogram was ordered.

The defendant, Dr. Uday Vyas, a cardiologist, and the defendant cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. William Bradshaw, interpreted the angiogram. They believed the angiogram showed 50% to 60% blockage of the opening of the left main coronary artery and 70% blockage of the proximal circumflex artery.

Because of the findings of blockage, the doctors ordered Giannetti to have a double coronary bypass surgery. She was never convinced that she needed the surgery and later showed the films to another cardiologist who told her there was no blockage whatsoever of any artery.

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An 11-year-old lawsuit finally came to an end in St. Clair County, Ill., when the jury entered a $1 million verdict for the medical malpractice-wrongful death of 71-year-old Margaret Janet Brown.  The case stemmed from  a 2002 coronary artery bypass surgery that failed.

In this case, the wrongful death-medical malpractice lawsuit was filed against a Bellville, Ill., anesthesiologist.  The doctor named as a defendant was Daniel P. Gillen of St. Clair Hospital Anesthesia.  St. Elizabeth’s Hospital was also named as a defendant in the case, which was filed in 2003.

The lawsuit alleged negligence causing the death of Brown.  According to the complaint, Dr. Gillen chose not to first obtain a consent to use a Swan-Ganz catheter during the coronary artery bypass surgery.  The Swan-Ganz catheter is used in surgery to measure a patient’s blood flow output. The lawsuit also claimed that the anesthesiologist chose not to properly monitor the catherization during Brown’s surgery.

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Ronald Cobb underwent surgery to insert an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Ill.  When the procedure was completed on Feb. 3, 2009, Cobb was  51.  Just two hours after the surgery, Cobb suffered a myocardial infarction in the recovery room and passed away.

His family brought a lawsuit alleging that the defendant doctors were negligent in that they withheld his Plavix medication and chose not to perform an angiogram before this surgery.  It was claimed that the failure to do the angiogram resulted in simultaneous stent thrombosis in two coronary arteries. 

The defendants maintained that discontinuation of Plavix was appropriate under the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association guidelines. The defendants contended that Cobb did not require an angiogram.  The jury agreed with that proposition and found in favor of the doctors and their practice group.

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Despite testimony that a quicker response by a Cook County hospital’s staff could have increased a patient’s chance of survival by ten percent, a Chicago jury finds in favor of the defendant doctors and hospital. The Cook County medical malpractice lawsuit of Estate of Edward W. Dornhecker, deceased v. Dr. Robert E. Applebaum, SSM Regional Health Services d/b/a St. Francis Hospital & Health Center, 07 L 13665, was brought by the decedent’s family after he died of heart surgery complications.

In 2005, Edward Dornhecker underwent coronary artery bypass graph surgery at St. Francis Hospital, now called MetroSouth Medical Center, in Blue Island, Illinois. The surgery was performed by Dr. Robert Applebaum and all reports indicated that the surgery had gone well. However, the next evening, Dornhecker began to experience problems breathing. His oxygenation progressively worsened to the point that he needed to be intubated transferred to the ICU.
Upon his transfer to the ICU at 4:00 a.m., one of the nurses noted a foul-smelling, brown liquid coming from the decedent’s chest. The liquid was coming from the area from where a chest drainage tube had been removed the prior morning. The nurse called the on-call cardiologist and pulmonologist to report a “foul-smelling fecal matter” oozing from Dornhecker’s chest. However, it was not until Dr. Applebaum arrived at the hospital hours later that anything was done.

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