Pittsburgh Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog

Even the most stoic patient can find the prospect of having to undergo a procedure in which they are put under using general anesthesia somewhat unnerving. After all, anesthesia errors by medical professionals can have horrific consequences ranging from liver poisoning and brain damage to coma and even death.

To illustrate just how harmful this type of medical negligence can be, consider the case of a 19-year-old girl who is currently in what her attorney describes as a "vegetative state" due to an anesthesia mishap during an otherwise routine medical procedure.

On January 10, the 19-year-old girl was taken to a hospital in Westchester County, New York, to undergo an endoscopy after previously complaining of stomach discomfort. For those unfamiliar with an endoscopy, it is essentially a procedure in which a camera attached to a flexible scope is inserted into the patient, allowing physicians to look inside without having to make any type of incision.

In November, our blog discussed a rather eye-opening report on hospital safety published by The Leapfrog Group, a national business-backed nonprofit seeking "to initiate breakthrough improvements in the safety, quality and affordability of health care for Americans."

Entitled the Hospital Safety Score, the report issued letter grades to over 2,500 U.S. hospitals based on their success in keeping patients safe from infections, injuries and general medical errors that routinely injure or kill patients.

Specifically, the group assigned letter grades after conducting a comprehensive assessment of 26 measures, including staffing levels, incidence of foreign objects left inside patients, pressure ulcer rates and presence of computerized prescription services, to name only a few. The data to make these assessments, in turn, was provided by various organizations and government entities.

In recent developments, the organization has now released its Spring 2013 Update to the Hospital Safety Score and the results show that hospitals are only making incremental progress in improving patient safety.

All this week, over 12,000 researchers and medical professionals from around the world will gather for the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology’s annual conference. While a gathering such as this typically wouldn’t generate many headlines outside of scientific circles, a recent presentation concerning how relatively simple tests might be able to provide critical insight into brain damage is causing quite a stir.

On Sunday, several of the nation’s top experts on neurological injuries among veterans and athletes gathered to discuss how simple eye tests may someday be used to identify the scope and extent of brain damage and even whether a particular treatment is producing the desired results.

Psychiatrist Elaine Peskind informed the assembled audience that at least 20 percent of all combat troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan were exposed to some sort of loud blast during their deployment, and that she had conducted an in-depth study of potential brain damage among those veterans who were subjected to a minimum of 14 blasts.

For the most part, medication errors occur largely because of negligence on the part of our local pharmacies. For example, the pharmacist may have failed to put the right pills in the bottle or perhaps the staff applied a label outlining an incorrect treatment regimen. While it's true that local pharmacies are ground zero for serious prescription errors more often than not, it's important to understand that these errors also occur with alarming regularity in medical settings like hospitals and clinics.

Consider a study performed by the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority examining 813 medication errors at over 270 medical facilities during a six-month period in 2011. The authors determined that the errors -- all of which involved giving the wrong drugs to the wrong patients -- occurred at various stages in the treatment process.

For instance, the report indicated that an overwhelming number of the so-called wrong-patient errors occurred when nurses administered the wrong doses to two patients taking the same medication or failed to verify a patient's identity.

In our previous post, our blog discussed a study highlighting the altogether grave threat posed by physician misdiagnoses, which accounted for roughly 35 percent of all medical malpractice claims filed in the U.S. over the last 25 years and roughly $39 billion in payouts to injured patients and their families.

This study, performed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, also found that the majority of diagnostic errors occurred in outpatient facilities such as clinics or doctors' offices.

Why then are diagnostic errors so much more likely to occur in these familiar environments?

According to experts, the answer may have something to do with communication or, perhaps more accurately, the lack thereof.

Through no fault of our own, many of us more than likely have a somewhat limited grasp of the term "misdiagnosis," presuming it is really nothing more than a synonym for "wrong diagnosis." While this is true to a certain degree, it's important to understand and appreciate that the term also encompasses a delayed diagnosis and no diagnosis, both of which can prove to be just as devastating to patients as the wrong diagnosis.

To understand just how pervasive misdiagnoses -- wrong diagnoses, delayed diagnoses and no diagnoses -- actually are, consider a recently published study in the British Medical Journal of Quality & Safety by researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The researchers determined that diagnostic errors were behind nearly 35 percent of all medical malpractice claims filed in the United States over the last 25 years, accounting for roughly $39 billion in payouts to injured patients and their families.

"These are the most common and the most costly of all malpractice claims," said Dr. David Newman-Toker, one of the primary authors of the study. "We have to pay attention to this because it is too big of a problem to ignore."

From operating at the wrong site or on the wrong body part to leaving a surgical instrument behind to making a catastrophic mistake with a scalpel, surgical errors can occur in a multitude of ways. What makes these surgical errors so especially devastating, however, is not just the resulting damage, but the long recovery time associated with their incidence as victims are often forced to spend additional days, weeks and even months in the hospital.

Shockingly, a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last week made some eye-opening revelations concerning the rate of surgical errors and the impact they have on the bottom lines of U.S. hospitals.

Researchers at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine have made a remarkable breakthrough in the fight to cure painful and altogether devastating myelin disorders such as multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy. In fact, their efforts revolve around a process that sounds more like something out of a science fiction movie than a laboratory on a university campus.

Using what they referred to as "cellular alchemy," the researchers were essentially able to convert common skin cells found in mice into functioning brain cells.

In general, most healthy people have a ready supply of myelinating cells. These cells are biologically designed to perform vital neurological functions, such as enabling the relay of brain impulses throughout the body, and both insulating and protecting neurons. Patients diagnosed with conditions like multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy, however, are suffering from a deficit of myelinating cells, which are not re-synthesized by the body when destroyed.