Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog

There appears to be a correlation between antidepressant drugs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSSIs) and falling injuries in nursing home patients who have dementia. The British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology released the results of a study that should make people take pause when approving certain medication for their loved ones who have dementia.

SSRIs are mostly used to treat clinical depression. There is a lot of debate over whether they are even effective—some studies show them to be no more reliable than placebos. (I think they probably work for some, but probably a minority, of patients.) SSRI antidepressants include:

• Paxil
• Luvox
• Zoloft
• Prozac
• Lexapro

The study showed that nursing home residents with dementia who take SSRIs are three times as likely to suffer falls. What’s more, the fall risk increases as the SSRI dosage increases. The data used is impressive—the study’s authors examined 248 nursing homes for two years, which resulted in 85,074 person-days.

Though the data does not strictly show cause-and-effect, it does raise some interesting concerns. Nursing homes in particular need to pay attention—if there is a cause-and-effect relationship, even if it can’t be proven legally, their best interest is in finding alternatives to SSRI’s for depression. Not all nursing home falls lead to lawsuits but some do. Why not make sure we are creating an environment that is as safe as possible?

Continue reading " Antidepressants Causing Nursing Home Falls? " »

Tragic story here about a lieutenant from a Sheriff's Department who was severely incapacitated after he underwent bariatric surgery in 2007. The details of his care and treatment are appalling.

After being told that a weight-loss surgery would be "less risky" than continuing to live in his physical state (he was 6'1" and 375 lbs), a once active and contributing member of society now remains confined to a wheelchair, brain damaged and blind, but completely aware of what he once was and what he is now.

How could this happen you might ask? Well, when your surgeon is unaccredited and has performed less than half of the required number of surgeries to become accredited, you find yourself with a major case of malpractice. Furthermore, the surgeon was required to have at least twenty hours of bariatric education courses, yet he had only taken one.

None of this stopped the hospital from holding themselves out as having an accredited "Bariatric Surgery Center," which amounted to fraud. The victim's attorney said that the hospital sold the illusion that they had a "team" of doctors and nurses, committed to bariatrics. On the day of surgery, the man found this to be untrue when, in the middle of about ten pages of documents, he found a paragraph stating that "we are all independent and nobody's a team."

The day after having undergone a gastric bypass surgery, the lieutenant collapsed in respiratory failure and was placed into critical care. For eight days, he showed signs of complication, where fluids from the bowels leaked into his abdomen. The hospital's own experts later stated that most bariatric doctors would have taken a patient back into surgery as soon as the patient showed symptoms, and no later than on the sixth day after surgery. But yet, he wasn't taken in for eight days.

At one point during the ordeal, his blood pressure dropped to the point where he suffered a "low-flow" stroke, and went comatose for over two weeks. During this time, he was on a respirator, though no lubricate eye drops were given to him, which burned his retina and caused permanent loss of eyesight. The lieutenant can no longer speak intelligently and he cannot walk, feed, or clean and bathe himself.

Continue reading " Man Awarded $178 Million in Medical Malpractice Lawsuit " »

Suit was recently filed in the Superior Court in Hartford, Connecticut, alleging that a pediatrician failed to diagnose bacterial meningitis, leading the loss of a young boy's eyesight.

The details here are so sad. The lawsuit claims that the doctor dismissed the boy's severe headache, instead of sending him to the emergency room where a spinal tap would have been done and the meningitis would have been diagnosed. Tragically, the boy fell into a month-long coma, suffering severe brain damage along with the blindness, the suit claims.

These kinds of failure to diagnose claims are so sad because the illness could have been so easily prevented had the proper diagnostic tests been done. Instead, the boy's complaints were disregarded and quickly brushed off. Too often, the severity of injury in meningitis cases is the result of medical malpractice. These claims usually involve an infection from a delay in diagnosis or failure to properly treat the meningitis to stop the infection. Too many doctors chalk up meningitis as simply a headache or a simple fever. Misdiagnosis or delay in diagnosis of bacterial meningitis is of great concern as early diagnosis of bacterial meningitis and treatment is key to prevent permanent damage such as brain damage, hearing loss, seizures, intracranial pressure, decreased intelligence, kidney damage, amputation, or death.

If you are or a loved one is a victim of medical malpractice, contact our team of lawyers to discuss your case. If you have any questions for our Maryland malpractice attorneys, you can reach us at 800-553-8082 or get a free, on-line no obligation medical misdiagnosis consultation.

The Pop Tort rages about the certificate of merit requirement that many states have in medical malpractice cases, citing a particularly onerous Connecticut merit requirement. The Pop Tort cites a news article of an awful injustice done to a woman who had her medical malpractice lawsuit dismissed.

After a long ride to the end of the article, we find out what the grave injustice was. The plaintiff sued her doctors for alleged breach of contract and infliction of emotional distress — not malpractice - and the court decided she need a certificate of merit.

Personally, I'm fine with this. I think certificates of merit are actually a good thing. There is a knee jerk reaction: the certificate of merit makes it hard for plaintiffs and their lawyers to bring lawsuits. But not all things that are made harder are bad thing. I know that there are some meritorious cases that don't make the cut because discovery is needed to get the information for the cerftificate of merit in the first place. But good lawyering can find a way around that problem, at least in Maryland.

The upside for medical malpractice victims is that there are less cases filed by a pro se plaintiff who is just mad at their doctor and does not have real evidence that could ever support a verdict. In states where there is no certificate of merit, the local paper with nothing else to write about always fires out a story about the poor doctor who got hit with a frivolous lawsuit. The absence of these stories provides an indirect but meaningful benefit to malpractice plaintiffs: less polluted juries and less stupid, irrelevant anecdotes to march in front of the Maryland General Assembly.

Please note: I could be completely wrong about this. Maybe certificate of merits keep out too many good cases than the PR upshot we get. But I think I'm right and I think the knee jerk "if it is hard for plaintiffs, it must be bad" colors the opinion of plaintiffs' lawyers more often than it should.

• Sample certificate of merit
• An overview of the certificate of merit requirement
• The application of the 20% rule

One frequent emergency room complaint is abdominal pain of unknown origin. The challenge for the ER doctor is to diagnose the source of the problem, or at least narrow the problem, and rule out life threatening aliments. Three big potentials for problems are appendicitis, volvulus, and ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm and intussusception - all can lead to misdiagnosis and wrongful death malpractice lawsuits. Today, we will look at appendicitis misdiagnosis claims.

Failure to diagnose an appendicitis is a common failure. It is critical to immediately remove an inflamed appendix before it ruptures. If a patient walks in with an inflamed appendix and walks out before getting the proper treatment – usually removal – they are put at risk of death. Particularly at risk for an appendicitis and a missed diagnosis is our youngest and oldest. The classical appendicitis presentation includes patients with low grade fevers with crampy, intermittent abdominal pain that gets worse with movement that migrates to the right lower quadrant of the stomach within 12–24 hours of the onset of symptoms.

Some emergency room doctors miss even the obvious diagnosis in patients most at risk. There are medical malpractice cases where the patient could just have well come in the emergency room with an “I have an inflamed appendix” shirt and the ER doctor still blows it. But the standard of care also requires ER doctors to catch more than just the fly balls. For moderate risk patients that have some, but not all of the classic appendicitis symptoms, doctors really do need to order more follow-up diagnostic testing. Call it defensive medicine, call it whatever you want, but if it looks like it could be an appendix problem, it's worth getting a CT scan.

Continue reading " Appendicitis Misdiagnosis " »