Articles Posted in Surgical Errors

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Charles Blevins, 63, underwent outpatient arthroscopic knee surgery. Four days after the surgery, Blevins went to a hospital emergency room complaining of fever and a hot and swollen knee. He was diagnosed as having pseudomonas infection and required hospitalization for one month; during that time he received IV antibiotics.

The infection, however, destroyed Blevins’s right knee joint, which necessitated a total knee replacement and required revision about a year later.

Blevins filed a lawsuit against the surgical center alleging the use of unsterile surgical instruments. According to Blevins’s lawsuit, at least 3 other patients contracted the same type of infection during the 10-day period surrounding his surgery. The lawsuit did not claim lost income.

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Cynthia and Kenneth Williams’s first child was born with sickle cell anemia. After the birth of their first child, the Williamses found out that they both had the sickle cell trait in which a normal gene is paired with the allele that causes sickle-shaped hemoglobin.

Individuals who carry this sickle cell trait usually don’t have symptoms of the blood disorder because their normal gene creates functional hemoglobin. However, when a baby is born from parents who both have the sickle cell trait, there is a 25% chance of getting two of the abnormal genes and the full-blown sickle cell disease for the child.

The Williamses were unwilling to take a chance with a second baby, and Cynthia decided to have tubal ligation. However, Cynthia became pregnant again allegedly because her physician, Dr. Byron Rosner, failed to close off one of her fallopian tubes during the sterilization surgery.

The Williams’s second child was born with the sickle cell disease.

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Guadalupe Ramirez had a history of congestive heart failure.  She was also an insulin-dependent diabetic, had mitral valve regurgitation, atrial fibrillation, rheumatic heart disease, high blood pressure and a prosthetic heart valve.  Ramirez, 72, underwent a cardiac catheterization procedure on Nov. 21, 2003.  Eight days after the procedure, Ramirez presented to the emergency department at the University of Illinois Hospital (UIC) complaining of groin pain.

The defendant, Dr. Joan Briller, was the attending cardiologist for the first 24 hours of her admission.  Dr. Briller and other physicians considered a retroperitoneal bleed in their assessment, but did not order a CT scan until about 22 hours later.

All parties agreed that a retroperitoneal bleed is a recognized complication of cardiac catheterization and often occurs in the absence of negligence.

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Orthopedic surgeon Kris Alden, M.D., performed the right knee replacement surgery on the plaintiff, Lawrence Lapiana, on May 26, 2011.  Lapiana had a history of severe osteoarthritis in both knees. The surgery was completed at Elmhurst Memorial Hospital. During the knee replacement, the artery behind the knee was cut with a surgical instrument at the level of the tibial plateau.  At the time the artery was severed, the bleed was not detected. 

As a result of the severed artery, Lapiana developed post-surgery compartment syndrome with severe pain, numbness and swelling in the right knee and calf while still in the post-anesthesia care unit.

Dr. Alden requested a vascular surgery consult for a suspected arterial injury and also ordered an emergent arteriogram.  The arteriogram revealed a complete transection of the popliteal artery.

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A 34-year-old patient, Sally Arbogast, underwent a vaginal delivery but experienced sharp abdominal pain and moderate bleeding right afterward.  She had delivered her last child by a Cesarean section. The obstetrician who cared for her performed a manual exploration and curettage procedure to rule out uterine scar rupture and later diagnosed uterine atony — a loss of tone in the muscles in the uterus.  It has been noted that 90% of all postpartum bleedings are associated with uterine atony, which is the failure of the uterine muscles to contract normally after the baby and placenta are delivered.

For an hour and a half, Arbogast remained hypotensive and tachycardic. Her blood work showed lower hemoglobin and hematocrit levels compared to before the baby was born.

While the doctors were looking into the patient’s hypotension, she coded.  After resuscitation measures and a blood transfusion, Arbogast received multiple units of packed blood cells and fresh frozen plasma over the next five hours.

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Michael Mals, 57, underwent a hip replacement at Lutheran General Hospital on Aug. 14, 2008.  He was given Coumadin, a blood thinner, to prevent deep vein thrombosis (DVT).  Three days later he was transferred to a nursing home for rehab where his INR (international normalized ratio) became supratherateutic and Coumadin was discontinued.  In other words, his blood became too thin for his well-being. 

Mals was readmitted to Lutheran General Hospital on Aug. 28, 2008 with an elevated INR level, suspected internal bleeding and an elevated white blood count. He was diagnosed with a bleed within the left iliacus muscle and bilateral DVTs.  He was restarted on Coumadin, and he returned to the nursing home on Sept. 2.

On Sept. 11, 2008, Mals was readmitted to Lutheran General with elevated INR and anemia, placed on Lovenox anticoagulant therapy and sent back to the rehab facility.

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A Will County, Ill., jury entered a $1,066,000 verdict against an orthopedic surgeon, David Burt, M.D.  Virginia Faletti, 82, underwent endoscopic carpal tunnel release surgery on her right wrist at Edward Hospital.  The surgery was done to relieve pressure on the median nerve because of crowding within the carpal tunnel of the wrist. 

Dr. Burt, however, cut the median nerve during the surgery.  After the procedure, Faletti felt pain and numbness in the right hand and wrist, but Dr. Burt chose not to recognize that he had cut the median nerve.  Instead, Dr. Burt prescribed medicine for the nerve pain as well as a brace and physical therapy, which did not resolve Faletti’s symptoms. 

Later, Faletti sought a second opinion and was eventually diagnosed with a transected median nerve by a neurosurgeon.  The neurosurgeon then referred her to a plastic reconstructive surgeon who performed nerve repair surgery. During this procedure, the doctor noted the right median nerve had been completely transected except for one nerve fiber. 

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Thomas Jackson, 57, underwent a hernia repair surgery by a general surgeon, the defendant, Dr. Kenneth Goldman.  Hours after the surgery, Jackson complained of severe stomach pain.  His condition deteriorated overnight;  the next morning Jackson developed a fever and a rapid pulse.

The hospital staff noted a decrease in urine output and an elevated white blood cell count, a sign of possible infectious process. The next day Jackson went into organ failure.

Jackson was later diagnosed as having an infection resulting in an intestinal perforation. He then went into surgery to repair the perforation, but spent six months in intensive care, where he developed severe pressure sores.

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In November 2008, 26-year-old Heather Hinshaw underwent gallbladder surgery at Trinity Medical Center in Rock Island, Ill.  The general surgeon who did the surgery thought he saw a stone in the common bile duct during an intraoperative cholangiogram, which is a procedure using a catheter to inject dye into the gallbladder to better visualize the blockage using X-ray.  He referred the patient to a gastroenterologist, the defendant Ahmad Cheema, M.D. 

A few hours after the gallbladder surgery, Dr. Cheema decided to perform an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), but he did not look at the cholangiogram results or discuss the case with the referring general surgeon.

Hinshaw did not have jaundice, yellowing of the skin, or any other symptoms of a stone in the common bile duct at the time. During the ERCP procedure, Dr. Cheema introduced a guidewire into the pancreatic duct and the wire curved back on itself puncturing the patient’s pancreatic duct.

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It is estimated that 250,000 people die each year in the United States as a result of medical malpractice according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  Approximately 80,000 Medicare patients suffer preventable adverse events that contribute to their deaths; as many as half of those deaths are due to emergency room errors. 

In 2003, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office stated that “181,000 severe injuries (attributable to medical negligence) occurred in U.S. hospitals [,]”.  These numbers show that medical malpractice deaths have worsened during the past ten years. Despite this increase, state governments and legislatures have tried to impede the amount of money recoverable to injured or killed persons and/or their families as the result of medical malpractice. 

For example, in Missouri, where I have been a member of the bar since 1976, nearly 1/3 of medical malpractice cases involve surgery in some way. The next largest percentage of medical errors reported there is 18.7% for misdiagnosis leading to severe injury or death followed by 13.2% involving falls or injuries during transport of patients. 

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