Articles Posted in Hospital Errors

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John Pluard, 51, fell from an attic and landed on a concrete surface 14 feet below, fracturing his leg and left elbow. Pluard was admitted to Harborview Medical Center where he underwent leg surgery to repair his fractured leg, but not to his arm.

After the surgery, Pluard reported increased pain in his left arm for which he was given morphine. Almost seven hours later, an orthopedic surgeon examined him. The doctor increased his morphine dose and saw him again the next morning. Pluard later lost most of his neuromotor functioning in his hand.  Despite emergency surgery, he does not have a functioning left hand.

Pluard had worked as a carpenter earning about $46,500 per year and has not been able to return to work. He and his wife sued the hospital, maintaining that it chose not to timely diagnose and treat compartment syndrome, which was the source and cause of his arm injury. The jury entered their verdict in favor of both Pluard and his wife for $1.58 million.

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Deshawn Gray, 25, suffered a left tibial fracture in a motorcycle accident. He was transferred to St. Joseph Hospital where he was admitted by orthopedic surgeon Dr. Jacqueline Mlsna. Dr. Mlsna ordered a femoral nerve block with a postsurgical catheter and then did an open reduction internal fixation surgery to repair the fracture.

Within three hours of the surgery, Gray developed severe pain, paresthesia and paralysis of his left foot and toes. Three hours after that, Gray’s attending nurses notified anesthesiologist Dr. James Maney, who allegedly advised the nurses to tell Dr. Mlsna about Gray’s symptoms. However, the nurses chose not to do that or follow up.

Over the next two days, Dr. Mlsna’s partner, orthopedist Dr. Shawn Tracy, noted that Gray had a numb and motionless foot.  Dr. Dr. Tracy allegedly attributed this to a possible surgical nerve injury.

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The plaintiff Saleh Mizyed appealed from the trial judge’s order granting summary judgment, which dismissed his medical malpractice complaint against the defendant Palos Community Hospital. The hospital was named as a party defendant under the theory of vicarious liability for the alleged negligence of Mizyed’s treating physicians.  The Illinois Appellate Court for the First District affirmed the dismissal.

Mizyed was treated at Palos Community Hospital (Palos) in early 2009. He is a native Arabic speaker. Although he speaks a limited amount of English, he was deposed in this case with the assistance of an interpreter. At his deposition, he testified that he cannot read or write in either English or Arabic, and that he relies on his adult children to read and translate documents for him. His adult daughter, Nadera (who testified that she has no difficulty speaking or reading English), sometimes went with Mizyed to his doctors’ appointments.

On Jan. 26, 2009, Mizyed visited his primary care physician, Dr. Odeh, for a regularly scheduled appointment. Nadera accompanied him to this doctor’s appointment.  Based on the EKG at the doctor’s office, Dr. Odeh told Mizyed that he needed to go to a hospital immediately. According to Nadera, Dr. Odeh told Mizyed that “it looks like you’re having a heart attack right now.” Dr. Odeh called an ambulance and Mizyed was transported to Palos.

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Angelica Heavner, 41, went to the hospital emergency room for treatment of jaw and head pain. A hospital employee placed an IV into Heavner’s metacarpal vein on her right hand. The insertion of the IV caused her to develop a blister at that site, plus burning and stinging pain.

The IV was not removed immediately. Heavner developed complications and was later diagnosed with having complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) of the right hand, which necessitated medication and a spinal cord stimulator. CRPS, or reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome, causes chronic pain in patients who have contracted it. The cause of CRPS is varied. In some cases, the cause of CRPS is the dysfunction in the central or peripheral nervous system.

Heavner filed a lawsuit against the hospital, alleging its employee negligently inserted the IV, which resulted in nerve contact and thus was the cause of the CRPS. The lawsuit also maintained that the defendant’s failure to promptly identify the problem and remove the IV led to the chronic pain syndrome. There was no claim for lost income.

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Gregory Cotter was 42 years old and had a history of alcoholism and mental health problems. He was also diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. He had attempted suicide.

After attempting suicide, Cotter was admitted to St. Francis Hospital where Dr. Sadaf Ahsan, the former director of the psychiatry department, treated him. After a 5-day period, Cotter was released to the custody of a friend.

Cotter disappeared one day later. His body was found with deep stab wounds, and his death was ruled suicide. Cotter, who had been earning about $40,000 a year as a painter, was survived by his wife.

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A 15-month-old child was admitted to the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital with pneumonia. After a nurse tried three times to place an endotracheal tube, a pediatric critical care specialist intubated the child successfully. However, because of oxygen deprivation related to the nurse’s misplacement of the endotracheal tube into the child’s esophagus, he was catastrophically brain damaged. In this case, the unnamed child was referred to as “Doe” and requires constant care.

Doe and his family filed a lawsuit against the nurse and the pediatric critical care physician alleging that the nurse should not have attempted to intubate Doe more than once. It was also claimed that the doctor should have supervised the nurse during the attempted intubation and should have taken over after her first attempt failed. The lawsuit claimed that the defendants chose not to timely recognize that the endotracheal tube had been misplaced into Doe’s esophagus.

Finally, the Doe family alleged that the hospital was vicariously liable for the actions of the nurse and the doctor.

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Kastriot Sadiku, a 29-year-old student who had used oxycodone, went to a hospital suffering from vomiting and impaired respiration among other symptoms. He was seen by an internist, Dr. Joseph Hederman, who gave Sadiku supplemental oxygen and began to monitor his heart and blood oxygenation.

When Sadiku’s condition worsened, he was attached to a respirator.

About an hour and half later, Dr. Hederman consulted an intensivist, Dr. Steven Bonzino, who diagnosed acute respiratory distress. Dr. Bonzino adjusted Sadiku’s supplemental oxygen.

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John Ficke was 50 years old when he developed a growth on his chest. His treating dermatologist performed a shave biopsy and sent the specimen to Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where a dermatology pathologist, Dr. Asher Rabinowitz, interpreted the growth as noncancerous. However, one year later, Ficke underwent a punch biopsy of the same growth and Dr. Rabinowitz reported this time the presence of desmoplastic melanoma.

Ficke underwent treatment including chemotherapy and radiation. However, the unfortunate part is that the cancer had metastasized and progressed to Stage IV.

Ficke and his wife brought a lawsuit against the Columbia University Hospital and Dr. Rabinowitz claiming a failure to correctly diagnose the melanoma, which the plaintiffs argued was present on the very first biopsy but missed by the defendants. The claim did not include lost income.

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In this Cook County, Ill., medical malpractice and wrongful death case, the hospital, Sisters of Saint Francis Health Services Inc. and Dr. Perry Marshall D.O. have appealed the jury’s verdict in favor of the family of the decedent, Georgia Tagalos.

On July 9, 2006, the plaintiff, Ted Fragogiannis accompanied by his mother, Georgia Tagalos, went to visit a friend in Bourbonnais, Ill. She was a long-time sufferer of asthma. During the ride home, Fragogiannis noticed that his mother began wheezing and gasping for air. She used two different inhalers, but her condition did not improve. She went into respiratory distress. Fragogiannis called 911 and arranged for an ambulance to meet them on the highway and take his mother to the hospital. According to the paramedics’ protocol, Tagalos was taken to St. Francis Hospital, which was the nearest hospital.

Tagalos arrived at the hospital at 1:45 p.m. and at that point she could no longer speak, but she was still responsive. Dr. Marshall was the emergency room’s attending physician. He was summoned by the nurse to address what had become a respiratory emergency. Dr. Marshall was at Tagalos’s bedside within minutes, but the parties disagreed about how many minutes elapsed. Dr. Marshall instructed a fourth year emergency room resident physician to see Ms. Tagalos and indicated that she might need to be intubated. The fourth year emergency resident, Dr. Julie Mills, assessed the patient and determined that an emergency intubation was required. At 1:56 p.m., 11 minutes after arriving at the hospital and while Dr. Mills was preparing for intubation, Tagalos became unresponsive.

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A Cook County jury entered a $351,000 jury verdict for 14-year-old Arkadiusz Sztuk who arrived at the emergency room at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Ill., with complaints of lower left abdominal pain. He was examined and treated by the defendant pediatric emergency room physician, Dr. Jagvir Singh.

In the medical negligence lawsuit filed on his behalf, it was alleged that the defendants, including Advocate Health & Hospital Corp. d/b/a as Advocate Lutheran General Hospital and Dr. Singh, were negligent in choosing not to diagnose left-sided testicular torsion, choosing not to perform a testicular examination to rule out torsion and failing to surgically prophylactically fix or fasten the right testicle or the right-sided torsion.

Testicular torsion takes place when a testicle rotates twisting the spermatic cord that brings blood to the scrotum. With the reduced blood flow, the results of the torsion can be very painful and cause swelling. Testicular torsion most commonly occurs to boys between the ages of 12 and 16. In most cases, testicular torsion requires emergency surgery. If treated quickly, the testicle can be saved. However, if the blood flow has been cut off for a long period of time, the testicle may be so badly damaged as to require its removal.

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