Misdiagnosis Leads to Blindness
In June, 2006, Juanita Tomlinson went to the Paris (Illinois) Community Hospital emergency room complaining of double vision, a headache and pain in her eyes. The doctors who evaluated Tomlinson diagnosed her with a urinary tract infection and sent her home with antibiotics. Shortly after returning home, Tomlinson's vision failed, and is now permanently blind. Confusion and falling are one of the symptoms associated with urinary tract infections in the elderly, but it isn't one of the more common signs. Tomlinson didn't complain about or show signs of a urinary tract infection in the hospital, but this didn't sway the doctor's "clinical impression."
Family Suit
A suit brought by Tomlinson's daughter, Tomlinson herself, and their attorney, claims that Tomlinson should have been treated for either transient ischemic attack (TIA) - a type of mini-stroke, cerebral vascular attack (CVA), or temporal arteritis (TA). TA is inflammation and damage to the blood vessels and arteries that supply the head. This is what ultimately caused Tomlinson's blindness.
The Tomlinson suit alleges that nurses, Dr. Gregory Lawson, and Midwest Emergency Department Services of O'Fallon are all at fault. The suit states in part that, "There was no differential diagnosis made that in any way considered or addressed Juanita's chief complaints related to her vision problems and associated symptoms."
Aftermath
Tomlinson has been suffering severe depression since the onset of her blindness. She now lives with, and must depend on, her daughter. Prior to going to the hospital, Tomlinson was very active, independent, and had good eyesight for a woman her age. (The complaint does not mention how old she is.)
We expect the health care professionals to know what they're doing when we go to see them. Sometimes they make mistakes. They're human, after all. I remember going in for a sore throat once and being diagnosed with allergies. Two days later I had a brutal case of tonsillitis that took me out of school for nearly a week. Obviously this is small potatoes compared to Juanita Tomlinson's story. However, the fact is misdiagnoses happen all over the country. And when these problems lead to a permanent downgrade in quality of life, or death, people may wonder where to turn.
If you, or a loved one, have had a misdiagnosis that caused pain or suffering, please contact an experienced personal injury lawyer. Labels: misdiagnosis
Rampant abuse of antipsychotic drugs in nursing homes
In recent years, nursing homes have increasingly turned to antipsychotic drugs as a cost-effective solution to caring for more patients with less staff. As the nursing home industry has moved toward larger institutions with more residents, the managing companies have sought to streamline their operations by reducing the number of staff members. An essential part of this strategy is using antipsychotic drugs to calm and quiet "unruly" patients. About 30% of nursing home residents are on antipsychotic drugs, including about 21% of non-psychotic patients. Why is this the case? There are three main factors. First, it is common for doctors to prescribe antipsychotics Risperdal and Seroquel for off-lable uses, such as sufferers of dementia. Recently, prescriptions for the antipsychotics were also written for depression, confusion, memory loss, and feelings of isolation, many of which are suffered by the majority of nursing home residents. Second, there is the above-mentioned desire of nursing homes to reduce staff, making them willing to do anything that will quiet patients without the need for physical restraints, which often lead to citations. Finally, Medicaid and other federal programs will reimburse nursing home for drugs, often without questioning the need for the prescription. If you have a loved one in a nursing home, it is important that you carefully scrutinize their medications to make sure they are not suffering from this form of abuse. If you suspect they are simply being given medications to keep them quiet, move them to another facility, and contact an experienced nursing home abuse lawyer. In Fort Lauderdale, contact Ellis, Ged, & Bodden, P.A. for a free initial consultation. Labels: medical negligence, misdiagnosis, nursing home abuse, off-label drug use, overprescription
Jury gives woman $2.5 million for misdiagnosis, 9 years of HIV treatment
A Boston, MA jury awarded $2.5 million in damages to a woman who was told she had the HIV virus, then underwent treatment for almost nine years before learning she never contracted the virus. As a result of the potent cocktail of dangerous drugs she took to kill the virus she never had, the woman suffered numerous side effects, including depression, fatigue, loss of weight and appetite, and inflamed intestines, all of which no doubt confirmed the AIDS hypothesis in the minds of doctors and nurses. However, what makes this case of medical malpractice so grievous and why the punitive amount in this case is far too small, is that the misdiagnosis was made on purely anecdotal evidence, and never once, during almost nine years of treatment, was the women given definitive tests to confirm the presence of HIV. The doctor claims that the woman said she had worked as a prostitute, that her partner had AIDS, and that she had suffered three bouts of a type of pneumonia commonly found in AIDS sufferers. In addition, the woman had elevated counts of immuno-response cells in her bloodstream. The woman denies she was a prostitute, does admit that a former boyfriend tested positive for HIV/AIDS, and it seems unlikely that the woman said she had suffered bouts of Pneumocystis pneumonia. But none of this is particularly important, since even if a woman was a prostitute and had bouts of Pneumocystis pneumonia, somewhere in nine years of treatment, a definitive test should have administered. Even if doctors wanted to begin the treatment immediately to aggressively combat the virus, when blood monitoring began and showed no presence of the virus, someone should have taken Othello's advice and said, "Be sure of it ; give me the ocular proof." Not to administer the test is a gross example of medical negligence. Although doctors often have to make judgment calls where evidence is incomplete and action must be taken immediately to save a life, whenever possible, medicine should fall back on its basis, which is science, not art. Doctors should not turn a lifestyle or a social background or an ethnicity into a diagnosis, and when they do this, they should be severely penalized for their medical malpractice. If you have gone to a doctor and received treatment based not on medicine, but on the doctor's personal biases about your race, sex, or lifestyle, contact the experienced medical malpractice attorney, Barry G. Doyle, in Chicago, for a consultation. Labels: hospital misconduct, medical malpractice, medical negligence, misdiagnosis
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