Pittsburgh Medical Malpractice Law Blog

A jury verdict of $78.5 million was rendered in Pennsylvania concerning the birth injuries leading to cerebral palsy. The injuries that led to this malady came about possibly because of an 81-minute delay before a cesarean section was performed.

It appears that the child was deprived of oxygen during labor and such a complication could have been alleviated if prompt action by the medical staff had been taken. This physician apparently at one point incorrectly told the mother than the baby had died which resulted in this delay. However a later ultrasound detected a fetal heartbeat that finally prompted the staff to perform the cesarean section procedure.

The United States Supreme Court declined to hear a case involving a former soldier who suffered severe brain damage due to a surgical error that occurred during a routine procedure performed at a military hospital. The soldier was admitted for appendicitis. However, when he stopped breathing while an appendectomy was being performed the staff inserted a breathing tube into the esophagus rather than the trachea.

Medical malpractice essentially left this soldier brain-dead. The reason why his brain injury case was turned down by the court is because of the so-called Feres Doctrine ruling that the federal government cannot be held liable for injuries that occurred during the course of military duty. Unfortunately, such a doctrine has also been expanded into the area of medical malpractice as well.

Most patients trust that careless mistakes will not be made by their medical providers while they are on the surgical table. Happily, patients in Pittsburgh are more fortunate in this regards than certain other areas in the nation. Just recently, a surgical error that took place in a southern state may have resulted in ongoing health problems for the patient.

The patient in question underwent surgery for stomach cancer back in 2010. Almost immediately after the surgery was performed he experienced severe abdominal pain and he began running a fever. X-rays and scans of the stomach then revealed that a retractor measuring 8 inches long and 2 inches wide was left in the man's abdomen after the surgery had been performed.

A nationally renown treatment center is being sued for the death of a 20-year-old patient while he was under treatment for bulimia and alcoholism. When complications arose in his treatment, the facility transferred him to another center, where he suffered from cardiac arrest and died.

The boy was transferred from an Arizona sober living home to the Morningside Recovery center in California. Initially the young man had made progress with alcohol use, but continued to binge and purge. According to a prior medical history, his biggest problem was with bulimia, not alcohol addiction.