Articles Posted in Sepsis

by

Frances Mitchell, 43, underwent outpatient laparoscopic surgery performed by surgeon Dr. Andrew Green at the Northeast Georgia Medical Center. Approximately 12 hours after the surgery, she returned to the medical center complaining of severe abdominal pain. Dr. Green examined her, diagnosed bladder spasms and discharged her.

Mitchell died several days later. She was survived by her mother and two children.

Mitchell’s family and estate filed a lawsuit against Dr. Green, the medical center, a physician group, and the health system alleging that she had suffered a bowel perforation during the surgery but that Dr. Green had chosen not to recognize and repair it intraoperatively.
Continue reading

by

Anna Mae Burnett had a history of falls. She was admitted to Powerback Rehabilitation after she had spinal surgery. During that admission, she had multiple falls. After the last fall, she was transferred to Pennsylvania Hospital. Over 32 hours later, she was diagnosed with having a T2 burst fracture and spinal cord compression.

Burnett’s condition led to paraplegia and neurogenic bladder and bowel. Almost three years later, she died of sepsis that developed from a urinary tract infection. She was 73 years old at the time of her death.

Burnett’s estate sued the hospital and the rehabilitation facility and its affiliates.
Continue reading

by

In this medical malpractice jury case, a Cook County Circuit Court judge rejected a request by the plaintiff, Jill Bailey. She had requested a non-pattern jury instruction on “loss-of-chance.” The judge’s decision resulted in a reversal of a defense verdict. Bailey alleged that Jill Milton-Hampton died because of a delay in diagnosing her suffering from sepsis or toxic shock syndrome when she twice went to the emergency room at Mercy Hospital in Chicago.

The judge relied on the case of Cetera v. DiFilippo, 404 Ill.App.3d 20 (2020) for the decision to refuse the instruction. The judge was justified in concluding that the long-form version of the pattern jury instruction on proximate causation, Illinois Pattern Jury Instruction (Civil) No. 15.01, adequately explains the loss-of-chance doctrine.

The Illinois Appellate Court for the First District reversed a judgment for the four emergency room physicians and their employer, Emergency Medicine Physicians of Chicago (EMP). They disagreed with Cetera stating that IPI 15.01 “does not distinctly inform the jury about loss-of-chance, i.e., that the jury may consider, as a proximate cause of a patient’s injury, that a defendant’s negligence lessened the effectiveness of the treatment or increased the risk of an unfavorable outcome to a plaintiff.
Continue reading

by

Dr. Gary Lovell, a gynecologist, performed a hysterectomy procedure on Karri Tingey. She was 49 years old at the time. After this procedure, Dr. Lovell reported that he had discovered and repaired a superficial tear on her sigmoid colon. He did not tell Tingey or her husband,

Within three days of that surgery, Tingey returned to the hospital where she was diagnosed as having sepsis and septic shock. She underwent emergency surgery, which revealed a bowel perforation in the upper area of her rectum.

Tingey and her husband sued Dr. Lovell, alleging that the doctor caused injury to Tingey’s bowel during the hysterectomy, misidentified the location of the injury, and repaired it improperly. Dr. Lovell died during the litigation.
Continue reading

by

Six days after undergoing hip replacement surgery and rehabilitation, Alice Underwood, 82, was admitted to Victor Valley Global Medical Center for treatment of a urinary tract infection and dehydration. She suffered a surgical site infection while she was hospitalized, which caused her incision to separate.

Underwood underwent surgery to remove necrotic tissue, after which she was sent to a rehabilitation facility. Twenty-six days later, she died of cardiopulmonary arrest and infection. Underwood was survived by her three adult daughters and a son.

The Underwood family, through a daughter, individually and on behalf of the Underwood estate, sued the hospital alleging it chose not to provide wound care to Underwood for 12 days during her hospitalization. The lawsuit also alleged that the hospital’s nurse negligently sent Underwood to the rehabilitation facility without the appropriate and necessary antibiotics.
Continue reading

by

Lisa-Maria Carter, 45, was seen as an outpatient at Tampa General Hospital to remove an ovarian cyst. The staff physician, Dr. Larry Glazerman, performed a Hassan laparoscopic procedure aided by two resident physicians.

During the surgery, Dr. Glazerman transected Carter’s bowel. She was admitted to the patient floor several hours after the surgery. She experienced severe pain and abnormally low blood pressure. In addition, her incision opened, discharging a large amount of bloody fluid.

Carter’s condition continued to worsen until she was diagnosed as suffering from acute respiratory failure, hypotension, organ failure and sepsis.
Continue reading

by

Ana Mejia, 35, was admitted to an undisclosed hospital to undergo a tubal ligation following the birth of her third child. The procedure was done by a doctor employed by the Public Health Service. Although she experienced postoperative bleeding and dizziness, she was discharged with a prescription for pain killers.

The next day, Mejia allegedly called her treating medical clinic, with the help of a friend, to report that she was experiencing high fever and significant pain. Her condition continued to deteriorate, and she was taken by ambulance to the hospital the next day.

Mejia went into septic shock, renal failure and other problems that required emergency surgery. Cultures from this surgery revealed Group A streptococcus and candida. Mejia was then taken to the ICU where she suffered cardiac arrest and several strokes.
Continue reading

by

In this medical malpractice lawsuit, injuries were suffered by the plaintiff, Lisa Swift, during a 2010 laparoscopic hysterectomy by the defendant Dr. David J. Schleicher. During this surgical procedure, Dr. Schleicher perforated Swift’s small bowel with three through-and-through holes. The doctor chose not to diagnose the perforations until four days after the surgery. Swift developed sepsis, needed a bowel resection surgery and then suffered additional complications that required hospitalization and home health care.

In addition to Dr. Schleicher, Swedish American Health System Corp. and its related companies were also made defendants. These defendants admitted that they caused the injury but argued that the injuries were not the result of negligence. At the end of the jury trial, the jury agreed with defendants and found in favor of them and against Swift.

The plaintiff Swift filed a motion for a new trial, which was denied by the trial court. As a result, Swift took an appeal arguing that the trial judge committed reversible error by (1) allowing evidence that plaintiff’s expert, Dr. Robert Dein, caused a bowel injury in 1989; (2) allowed cumulative defense testimony; and (3) declined to find the verdict against the manifest weight of the evidence.
Continue reading

by

According to a report in Modern Healthcare, the University of Colorado Health and its flagship hospital, University of Colorado Hospital, reduced the sepsis mortality rate by 15% in less than one year. In 2016, about 10% of patients with sepsis died from it. At the University of Colorado Hospital, officials conducted an internal study and found that some septic patients did not receive the needed antibiotics quickly enough. According to CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), antibiotics should be given to patients with sepsis within three hours. The University of Colorado Health has found that patients regularly waited three hours or longer to get the needed antibiotic after sepsis was diagnosed.

At the University of Colorado Health, it was proven convincingly that if the patient receives antibiotics within an hour of the sepsis diagnosis, the sepsis death rate dropped by 50%. At the University of Colorado Hospital to reduce this response time, its officials developed a multi-step process that uses patients’ electronic medical records to identify patients who are at risk of sepsis. The electronic health records (EHR) monitors patients’ vital signs and alert a nurse of any abnormalities. The nurse then will check for other signs of sepsis and enter those symptoms into the EHR, which determines whether the patient has a low, medium or high probability of sepsis.

When patients are determined to have a medium or high probability of contracting sepsis, the hospital’s sepsis team, a group of caregivers made up of a nurse, pharmacist and a physician or advanced practitioner, who are dedicated to making quick sepsis diagnoses, are put into place. If the team determines that the patient is septic, antibiotics are immediately ordered and given. The prescription is marked as urgent to make sure that the pharmacist fills the order within the hour.
Continue reading