A case of medical negligence is established when a doctor, nurse, dentist, a surgeon or other medical professionals do not perform their jobs as expected and they deviate from the acceptable standards of medical care. Negligence is also explained as medical malpractice. When such negligence accounts for an undue injury or impairment to a person’s health, it becomes the basis of a malpractice lawsuit. Medical negligence incidents include misdiagnosis, surgical errors, failure to diagnose on a timely basis, anesthesia errors or prescription errors.
If you are involved in a case of medical negligence, you need not suffer that silently; you have to initiate a claim on compensation. Command Post and its experts would be of service when such situations arise.
We bring to you a latest case on medical negligence where after a fortnight’s trial in Illinois, a court jury awarded a verdict to a lady that amounted to five million dollars as a result of negligence and failure by a couple of doctors who ignored leakage from this lady’s artery after she was operated for right knee replacement. A couple of days after the surgery, she started to observe that she was unable to move her ankle and her toes. There was numbness in her right foot that intensified in pain and edema. These were all symptoms of a neurovascular internal injury.
After this lady was discharged, she was sent for rehabilitation post surgery at the Rehabilitation Institute in Chicago. It was suggested, on examination, that there was a serious post surgical neurovascular injury to her right leg. As a result, the patient had developed pseudo-aneurysm. This is a condition where there is a leakage of arterial blood into surrounding tissues. In some cases, this may resolve by itself but at other times, treatment is required to avoid hemorrhage or uncontrolled leakage that may result in severe complications.
In this particular case, she was readmitted for surgery. She had to undergo a bypass surgery for correction of this pseudo-aneurysm and a double compartment fasciotomy. Unfortunately for the patient, her troubles did not end there; as there was a considerable build up of fluids, she had to undergo a four-compartment fasciotomy, again. She had to remain hospitalized for a longer period, resulting in a dropped foot condition and a paralysis in her ankle and toes, along with permanent numbness in her right foot.
Her husband filed a suit against the concerned doctors. The charges against the doctors were for an act of medical negligence in post surgical care. She argued that both doctors ignored the swelling and the pain in her right leg after the surgery. If the doctors had been careful, they would have immediately attended to her and performed a vascular surgery which may have prevented the severe internal injuries that followed the surgery.
At this trial, the concerned lady was awarded one and a quarter million dollars for her suffering and her pain. She was further awarded one and a half million dollars as a result of a loss of leading her life in normal conditions, one and a quarter million dollars for suffering emotional distress, half a million dollars for disfigurement and over eight hundred thousand dollars towards medical expenses. Her husband was also awarded a quarter of a million dollars for consortium loss and loss of sexual relationship and companionship.
It is therefore useful to take help of our legal advice and our valuable consultancy in cases of medical negligence. There are so many nightmare stories that we read about today about nurses giving excessively toxic drugs or giving wrong drugs to patients and surgeons ending up removing wrong parts of the body. Medical errors are on the rise in hospitals and clinics. Medical negligence accounts for almost a quarter million lives every year in the United States of America and is the third leading cause of death as per medical statistics.
You have to appreciate that filing of medical malpractice lawsuits is a complex affair. It is wiser to engage our experience and guidance to establish valid medical negligence or malpractice claims.