Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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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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 A 15-month-old child who required 24-hour care as a result of his extreme prematurity was under the care of a home health care nurse.  The nurse’s duties included keeping a watchful eye on the child to make sure he was properly ventilated. On the date of this incident, the child became detached from the ventilator. 

According to the lawsuit, the home health care nurse panicked and called the child’s father.  When the father came to the aid of the child, he began resuscitation efforts.  However, the child suffered cardiac arrest resulting in hypoxic brain damage.  The child is now in a persistent vegetative state. 

The family sued the home health care nurse claiming that she failed to manage the child’s oxygen saturation in a timely fashion, chose not to manage the child’s oxygen saturation, did not timely notice the dislodged ventilator and chose not to resuscitate the child in a timely manner.

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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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Andrew Hanson, 49, was injured at his job.  He went in to see his family practice physician, Dr. Ronald Davis, who diagnosed a crushed injury to his chest.  Hanson then underwent a work-up, which showed a left chest contusion.

The next day, Hanson experienced other symptoms, including shortness of breath.  Dr. Davis told Hanson that his injury would take time to heal. Two days later, Hanson met with Dr. Davis; Hanson was suffering from extreme hypotension (low blood pressure) among other symptoms.  Dr. Davis referred Hanson for a CT scan, and he was then diagnosed as having a heart attack.

He is now totally disabled and unable to continue his job as a truck driver; until his injury and illness, he was earning about $50,000 a year.

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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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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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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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Tony Love, 13, came through the emergency department at Ingalls Memorial Hospital complaining of left knee pain and a fever on Sept. 23, 2007.  He was diagnosed with a quadriceps strain and was sent home. 

The next morning, Sept. 24, 2007, Love was seen by the defendant physician, Dr. Arun Shah at Harvey Health Center for complaints of continuing knee pain, but his temperature was normal. 

Dr. Shah diagnosed Love as having a sprained knee.  Three days later on Sept. 27, 2007, Love was taken to South Suburban Hospital with a high fever, severe knee pain and inability to walk. The lab work there showed an elevated white blood count and elevated liver enzymes as well as a blood culture that revealed methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in the knee.

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In September 2007, 55-year-old Barbara Ann Drebek-Doyle underwent a CT scan of the sinuses due to her recurrent sinusitis condition. The test was performed at Advocate Condell Gurnee Outpatient Radiology Center. The scan was interpreted by the defendant Dr. David E. Foosaner, a radiologist.  In a lawsuit that was filed by Ms. Drebek-Doyle, she contended that Dr. Foosaner chose not to detect and report a brain mass or tumor that was seen on the CT scan. As a result, the tumor remained undiscovered and untreated for 3.5 years. 

In March 2011, an MRI of the brain showed the brain mass at the top center of Ms. Drebek-Doyle’s head. Surgery was done to remove the benign mass, a meningioma that was in the membrane lining of the brain. Meningioma occur most frequently with women; they cause various types of symptoms.  Some symptoms include chronic headache, nausea, vomiting and balance issues. If the tumor is not removed fairly quickly, there is a risk that it may increase in size and cause much more serious effects, including death.

The plaintiff maintained that if the radiologist defendant had reported the mass in 2007, it could have been removed at that time. Instead, the delay caused Ms. Drebek-Doyle to suffer various problems over the next 3 ½ years, including increased headaches, loss of balance, memory deficits, bowel incontinence and fatigue. 

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A confidential settlement was reached wherein a 63-year-old woman’s misdiagnosed lung cancer led to her untimely death. The woman, identified only as Doe, underwent a CT scan while she was hospitalized. This showed a lung lesion that the interpreting radiologist reported as possible cancer. A hospitalist reported these findings to Doe’s primary care physician. 

The primary care physician referred Doe to a pulmonologist but did not tell her that cancer was suspected.  The hospital sent Doe’s CT scan to the pulmonologist, who reported to the primary care physician that part of the scan was missing. The primary care physician allegedly said that he would provide the missing film. However, there was no followup. The pulmonologist also chose not tell Doe that cancer was suspected when the two subsequently met.

Five years later, Doe developed shortness of breath and other ominous symptoms. Doe was diagnosed with having Stage IV lung cancer; she died two months later. Doe was survived by her husband and two adult children. Doe’s husband filed a lawsuit against the primary care physician and the pulmonologist claiming that these defendants chose not to follow up on the radiologist’s suspicion of lung cancer. The lawsuit did not claim any lost income.

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