Other Injury

March 26, 2014

Appeals Court Upholds Judgment Against Pediatrician, But Tosses Case Against Hospital in Infant Malpractice Case

A family who lost their infant child at only nine days of age received a partial legal victory recently in the Louisiana Court of Appeal pertaining to their medical malpractice case against a Slidell hospital and a pediatrician. The appeals court decided that a lower court judgment against the doctor could stand, but that the hospital was not liable in the child’s death because the family’s expert witness failed to testify regarding how the hospital staff’s missteps caused the child’s fatal injury.

The case regarded the treatment of Alex Ducre Jr. at Slidell Memorial Hospital. The child was born at the hospital roughly four weeks prematurely. Although the child initially appeared healthy, he began showing signs of mild jaundice around 36 hours after birth. The child’s pediatrician, Phyllis Waring, nevertheless discharged him the following morning. Three days later, the mother telephoned the hospital because the child showed worsening signs of jaundice. The nurse on the phone told the mother simply to bring the child to the hospital the next day for a regularly scheduled lactation appointment.

By the time the child arrived at the hospital, he was lethargic, and had poor muscle tone with yellow skin and yellowing in the whites of his eyes. The hospital admitted the baby to the pediatric intensive care unit. The child’s condition deteriorated and he died three days later.

January 7, 2014

Errantly Performed Biopsy Leads to Complications, Mastectomy, Cancer Patient Claims

by Cardone Law Firm

For many women, little is worse than receiving a diagnosis of breast cancer. For one Jefferson Parish woman, as reported by the Louisiana Record, her pain was allegedly worsened by an incorrectly performed biopsy. The woman claimed in a recent medical malpractice lawsuit that the error delayed her cancer diagnosis by several months, leading her to endure a series of invasive treatments and procedures that she claims she would not have needed if her medical care providers made the correct diagnosis after the initial biopsy.

Tamberly Gray’s health concerns emerged after her gynecologist discovered a lump in her right breast in 2008. The doctor referred the patient for a biopsy to discover if the mass was cancerous. The gynecologist, Dr. Penelope Treece, performed a vacuum-assisted biopsy of the patient’s right breast and told the patient she did not have cancer. Vacuum-assisted biopsies are minimally invasive procedures in which a probe is inserted into a small incision and, using ultrasound image guidance, extracts suspicious tissue for analysis.

The alleged failure in Gray’s case was not with the doctor’s failure to identify the tissue as cancerous; the tissue she removed was cancer-free. The problem was, according to the patient, the doctor inserted the probe in the wrong place and the tissue she removed was not from the mass.

November 24, 2013

New Orleans Visitors: Know How to Deal With an Injury or Accident Far From Home

by Cardone Law Firm

Greater New Orleans provides a wealth of amazing tourist attractions. The area also boasts several outstanding institutions of higher learning, including Tulane University, Loyola University and Xavier University. The area’s attractions offer artistic, cultural and historical enrichment, but they also present, like any other location, the risk of injury. Whether you’re a student from out of state, or a visiting tourist or business convention attendee, knowing the proper steps to take if you’re injured here is essential to minimizing your stress and maximizing the protection of your rights.

Certainly, one of the most popular destinations for tourists and college students is Canal Street and the French Quarter. Recent events, though, have shown the potential for harm in this area. This past summer, a woman sued over injuries she suffered as a result of stepping into an uncovered water meter hole on Canal Street. A man also filed a negligence suit against a French Quarter bar in January as a result of a severe beating he received in the bar’s parking lot.

While neither the woman not the man may have been students or tourists, their injuries nevertheless spotlight the potential misfortunes that can befall students or tourists visiting New Orleans. Regrettably, injured students and tourists do not know how to handle this situation. Even if they recognize their injuries right away, they may not know where to turn. Others might not discover their injuries until they have returned home, and may feel at a loss regarding how to find an attorney now that they have left the state.

November 9, 2013

Failure to Diagnose Pregnancy Leads to Invasive Emergency Surgery, According to Patient’s Lawsuit

by Cardone Law Firm

Experiencing the kind of pain or illness that is bad enough to lead you to the emergency room is bad enough. When the medical providers whose assistance you seek fail to run the necessary tests to determine an accurate diagnosis, and you require invasive, emergency surgery two months later, that is certainly far worse. But that is exactly what happened to a woman when she visited a Jefferson Parish hospital recently, according to a medical lawsuit she filed in state court in Gretna.

Delores Penman-Sisson’s medical odyssey started with a bout of extreme nausea, vomiting and lower abdominal pain. She traveled to the East Jefferson General Hospital’s emergency room for assistance. While there, the staff allegedly administered several pregnancy tests that involved analyzing a sample of urine. However, because the woman had an ovarian cyst, she could not provide an adequate urine sample to yield a conclusive test. In addition to urine-based pregnancy tests, another type of pregnancy test analyzed the woman’s blood.

Two months later, medical professionals determined that the woman actually was pregnant. She had an ectopic pregnancy. In a normal pregnancy, a fertilized egg attaches itself to the lining of the mother’s uterus. In an ectopic pregnancy, the fertilized egg implants somewhere other than the uterus. The most common type of ectopic pregnancy occurs in the fallopian tubes (known as a “tubal pregnancy,”) but ectopic pregnancies may also occur in the abdominal cavity, ovary or cervix.

October 29, 2013

St. Bernard Parish Family Achieves Settlement in Water-Borne Amoeba Death Case

by Cardone Law Firm

A St. Bernard Parish man almost certainly had no idea the peril that awaited him when he decided to use a common device to clear his sinuses. In the wake of the man’s death from a rare, brain-eating amoeba, the makers of the medical device and the home water heater the man used have settled a wrongful death claim initiated by the man’s parents, the Washington Post reports.

In 2011, Jeffrey Cusimano decided to use a “neti pot” to clear his sinuses. Neti pots work by thinning mucus and flushing it from the user’s sinus passages. After using the device, a parasitic amoeba entered the man’s system and he developed meningioencephalitis. The amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, enters the body through the nose. Cusimano died on June 7, 2011.

The man’s parents sued both the neti pot manufacturer, NeilMed Pharmaceuticals Inc., and the maker of his home water heater, Rheem Manufacturing Co., in federal court. The family alleged that both devices contributed to the fatal case of meningitis. The water heater was defective and unreasonably dangerous, the parents maintained, because it failed to heat the home’s water to a temperature high enough to kill the amoeba. The neti pot was also defective and unreasonable dangerous because its construction or material makeup allowed the amoeba build up and flourish, according to the complaint.

September 17, 2013

Overlooked Surgical Sponge Leads to Injury, Lawsuit in Louisiana

by Cardone Law Firm

Patients are often fearful of many things when they enter a hospital for surgery. One thing they likely don’t think about, and shouldn’t need to, is having surgical implements or materials forgotten and left in their bodies after the procedure’s conclusion. One Louisiana man claims he recently suffered such a fate at the West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero. According to the patient, the hospital staff failed to account for all of the surgical sponges it used during his colon cancer surgery and left one behind, leading to fever, drainage, bloating and swelling.

Charles Anderson initially faced the stressful news, following a colonoscopy, that he had colon cancer. In the spring of 2010, Anderson underwent surgery to treat his cancer. Anderson’s problems worsened after the surgery. He began experiencing high fevers shortly after the procedure and later noticed heavy abdominal bloating and swelling in his right abdomen. That fall, doctors performed a body scan on Anderson, whereupon they discovered a surgical sponge inside his body. The forgotten sponge required Anderson to undergo another surgery to remove it.

The patient filed a medical malpractice suit against the hospital and his surgeon for his injuries. Anderson contended that the hospital and the surgeon failed to maintain a proper count of the surgical sponges used on (and removed from) his body, failed to have proper safety procedures in place, failed to ensure competence among the staff, and failed to monitor the post-operative infection he developed to a proper extent. Anderson is seeking an unspecified amount of damages for his pain and suffering, medical expenses, emotional distress, mental anguish, loss of earning capacity, impairment and disfigurement.

June 16, 2013

Getting it Wrong – Louisiana Med Mal Cases, Often Result of Misdiagnosis

by Cardone Law Firm

Those suffering from medical ailments make appointments, pay copays, and sit in waiting rooms to hear from doctors about what is or is not wrong with them. Doctors, professionals trained and trusted to diagnose patient symptoms, are still capable of mistakes – but what happens when a diagnosis is incorrect? Or late?

A Pennsylvania woman was awarded $3 million dollars after her unfortunate misdiagnosis. The woman visited her doctor’s office with sinus complaints. With neither practicing physicians onsite during the visit, a physician’s assistant attended to the woman, and upon examination recommended a steroid treatment. This treatment masked the ailing patient’s condition and, without antibiotics, allowed the infection to evolve to a brain abscess. This led to emergency surgery, two months of hospitalization, rehab, and continuing emotional and cognitive issues. The whole medical malpractice claim could have been prevented on that first visit.

According to a recent study released out of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, wrong or missed diagnoses comprised the lion’s share of medical malpractice claims in the U.S. over the past 25 years. The study, authored by Dr. David Newman-Toker, looked at over 350,000 medical malpractice claims and estimated that approximately 160,000 claims a year involve either death or permanent damage as a result of a misdiagnosis.

Medicine is understandably a difficult field, and studies have shown that up to a quarter of the population will receive an incorrect diagnosis. Fortunately, many of these misdiagnoses are harmless but one can never be quite too careful. The Journal of Clinical Oncology estimates the misdiagnoses rate for certain cancers around 44%.

And although rare, misdiagnosis can be good news. A Maine man won his malpractice suit against his physician who diagnosed him with aggressive stage 4 cancer that was certainly terminal. Upon further examination, doctors informed this patient that despite being told he had months to live, his original diagnosis was incorrect and he had a highly treatable cancer. A suit ensued for “tremendous emotional distress” and the court ruled in favor of the misdiagnosed man awarding him $200,000 in damages.

Medical malpractice, a $3.6 billion per year field, is a costly and dangerous warning sign to patients to always be cautious of professional opinions. Some basic suggestions:

1) Ask questions. When visiting a physician, ask follow up questions. Lay your symptoms on the table, and if a diagnosis doesn’t seem right to you, communicate these thoughts. Doctors are not mind-readers and cannot know other causes for symptoms they’re not told about.
2) Get a second opinion. If you feel treatment is not working, or if the treatment seems overly invasive, it is not an insult to seek a consultation with another doctor. Doctors wish to avoid any and all claims and if they missed something, they are more than happy that it is found early, even by someone else, before expenses build up.
3) Medical malpractice can be committed by those other than medical doctors. Understand that therapists, nurses, assistants, and other attendants can commit medical malpractice errors in your treatment.
4) Seek a knowledgeable attorney. Ninety-three percent of medical malpractice cases are settled, and an individual who has a claim must be aware of all the intricacies of a settlement agreement and must have keen negotiators on their side in order to better their chances at success.

February 20, 2013

A Penis Fracture and an Emergency Room Oversight

by Cardone Law Firm

In 2009, the story of the R.I. lawsuit began in his own home when he, engaging in sexual relations, injured his penis. That morning R.I. contacted the nearest emergency room, in Bogalusa, and was advised to go to the St. Tammany Parish Hospital (STPH) immediately. Upon arrival at the hospital, his penile fracture was soon correctly diagnosed by Dr. Susan Craig of STPH.

Penis fractures are the result of a trauma that ruptures or tears the lining of one of the two fabric cylinders within the penis. These cylinders are known as corpus cavernosum and fill with blood during an erection thereby causing the hardening effect. When these are damaged, the person will experience severe pain, bruising, blood in urine, and a partial or complete inability to become erect. Without treatment a penis may become deformed and lead to permanent erectile dysfunction.