Pain Category Archives — DC Medical Malpractice & Patient Safety Blog Published by Washington, D.C. Personal Injury Lawyers

December 18, 2022

Misdiagnoses lead to 250,000 ER patients’ deaths annually, U.S. study finds

Doctors working in hospital emergency departments face chaos, violence and high stress every day, and usually they get the diagnosis and treatment right. But, and it’s a big but, as often as one in seventeen ER visits ends with a misdiagnosis, which can have deadly consequences. Those medical misdiagnosis are newly estimated by Johns Hopkins medical school researchers as a significant peril for patients across the country.

Doctors in the too-often harried ER environs fail to correctly “identify serious medical conditions like stroke, sepsis and pneumonia,” leading to the deaths of as many as 250,000 patients each year, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Evidence-based Practice Center found in their work for a federal health care oversight agency. The New York Times reported this of the work:

“The study, released [Dec. 15] by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, estimates roughly 7.4 million people are inaccurately diagnosed of the 130 million annual visits to hospital emergency departments in the United States. Some 370,000 patients may suffer serious harm as a result. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, under a contract with the agency, analyzed data from two decades’ worth of studies to quantify the rate of diagnostic errors in the emergency room and identify serious conditions where doctors are most likely to make a mistake. Many of the studies were based on incidents in European countries and Canada, leading some officials of U.S. medical organizations to criticize the researchers’ conclusions.

December 9, 2022

While surgeons operate often on the elderly, studies are just starting to detail the risks

by Patrick A. Malone

Seniors and their loved ones should take note of new and increasing data that researchers are developing about the risks undertaken by elderly patients who choose to undergo significant surgeries — procedures that make up a little less than half of costly operations performed in this country.

The numbers about invasive medical work can be mind-changing, especially for those with age-associated conditions, the independent, nonpartisan Kaiser Health News Service reported. As KHN’s “navigating aging” columnist Judith Graham wrote:

“Nearly 1 in 7 older adults die within a year of undergoing major surgery, according to an important new study that sheds much-needed light on the risks seniors face when having invasive procedures. Especially vulnerable are older patients with probable dementia (33% die within a year) and frailty (28%), as well as those having emergency surgeries (22%). Advanced age also amplifies risk: Patients who were 90 or older were six times as likely to die than those ages 65 to 69. The study in JAMA Surgery, published by researchers at Yale School of Medicine, addresses a notable gap in research: Though patients 65 and older undergo nearly 40% of all surgeries in the U.S., detailed national data about the outcomes of these procedures has been largely missing.”

November 27, 2022

College sports organization prevails in an early, difficult case on head injuries

by Patrick A. Malone

Armchair quarterbacks of the legal kind have raced onto the field, arguing that a Los Angeles jury verdict will help shield the National Collegiate Athletic Association from a potential avalanche of claims asserting the group did too little to protect young players from debilitation and death due to head trauma.

Maybe, maybe not.

Jurors rejected the case seeking $55 million from the NCAA, accusing the body that oversees collegiate athletics of failing to safeguard Matthew Gee, a University of Southern California linebacker on the 1990 Rose Bowl-winning squad.

November 22, 2022

Walmart, with $3.1 billion plan, joins big pharmacies in settling opioid suits

by Patrick A. Malone

Walmart has offered to pay $3.1 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits filed against the deep-pocketed retailing giant, accusing it of complicity through its nationwide pharmacy operations in the lethal opioid abuse and overdose crisis.

The Bentonville, Ark., -based company insists it committed no wrong and the states, counties, cities, Indian tribes, and others who sued Walmart said it did not have as large a part as other pharmacy chains in inundating the country with powerful, prescribed painkillers.

Still, Walmart joins CVS and Walgreens in settling rather than confronting those who have found sustained success in seeking justice in the civil system, various news organizations have reported.

November 8, 2022

Nation’s biggest drug stores seek to settle opioid suits for $10 billion

by Patrick A. Malone

While critics keep throwing up a false narrative about “ambulance chasing,” self-enriching lawyers, their labors and the civil legal system have proven yet again their effectiveness in wringing financial justice for those harmed by health care giants.

The nation’s largest pharmacy chains have tentatively agreed to pay $10 billion in settlements for dispensing an avalanche of addictive, debilitating, and deadly prescription painkillers.

CVS and Walgreens, which had been among the staunchest holdouts in battling opioid litigation, both defended their business practices and denied any wrongdoing. They blamed doctors for excessive prescribing of powerful opioid drugs, which, federal officials say, fueled an abuse and overdose crisis that is worsening and killed more than 100,000 Americans last year.

October 11, 2022

Pro sports show seamy sides in mistreating women and head trauma

by Patrick A. Malone

While fans may wax poetic about how sports show humanity at its finest, the grim and even sleazy aspects of U.S. games also have been on full display in recent days.

The poohbahs of two of the nation’s most popular pastimes have acted poorly and spoken loudly as to how, maybe they don’t really give a whit about players’ health and well-being, permitting perversity and demeaning behaviors to flourish in women’s soccer and brutality and an almost willful medical blindness to rise anew in pro football for head trauma.

What are parents supposed to tell their kids about such sports “role models?”

September 2, 2022

Don’t get in an injury pickle by overdoing trendy games

by Patrick A. Malone

The newly familiar thwack, pop, and crack of the pastime of pickleball, alas, is increasingly accompanied by some other sounds — the moans and groans of picklers who find themselves with injuries that can be more than annoying for older aficionados of this trendy sport.

Noe Sariban, a pickleball instructor, former pro player, and a physical therapist who markets himself as the Pickleball Doctor, told the New York Times about the rising list of injuries he sees regularly from a game that is played in a constrained space and purports to offer a less-strenuous alternative for those who can’t quite cover an expansive court any more in other racket sports:

“Achilles’ strains or tears, shoulder problems, rotator cuff injuries, lower back problems such as disc injuries, muscle strains …”

August 23, 2022

3 giant drug store chains hit with $650-million judgment for opioid harms

by Patrick A. Malone

CVS, Walgreens, and Walmart are getting expensive lessons about corporate responsibility in filling prescriptions, as federal courts in San Francisco and Cleveland separately have faulted the companies for inundating communities with staggering quantities of addictive painkillers.

Those drugs caused such great harm that the three major drug chains must pay two Ohio Counties $650.5 million, a judge has decided.

The county governments told U.S. Judge Dan A. Polster — before whom has been consolidated thousands of lawsuits from states, counties, cities, other local governments, and Indian tribes — that they estimate they and their residents have suffered $3 billion in damages due to the opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis. A November jury verdict in favor of the two Ohio counties already faulted the pharmacy chains for continuing “to dispense mass quantities of prescription painkillers over the years while ignoring flagrant signs that the pills were being abused,” the New York Times reported.

August 19, 2022

Beware of heat and head trauma as young athletes prepare for fall sports

by Patrick A. Malone

Even before the school bells ring to bring kids back to classes, young athletes have taken to steamy fields and other facilities for fall training — making this an ideal time to remind coaches, trainers, players, and parents to ensure important steps are taken for safety’s sake.

While injury prevention of all kinds must be paramount in school sports — programs that must focus on young folks’ recreation and enjoyment as much as competition — two problems persist and require great diligence as players ramp up their conditioning: heat injury and head trauma.

Susan Yeargin, an associate professor of athletic training at the University of South Carolina and co-author of the National Athletic Trainers Association’s position statement on heat illness, told the Washington Post that it takes all people, but especially younger players, time to adjust to the heat and humidity of late summer and early fall:

August 9, 2022

With 350 lawsuits filed, hospital now can’t ignore outcry over orthopedist

by Patrick A. Malone

The nurses complained, and so did a handful of doctors. The patients howled. Yet, for years, administrators at a Florida hospital ignored the repeated alarms, critics say.

Now, 350 lawsuits have been filed and 100 more are expected, all asserting that Dr. Richard David Heekin, a seasoned orthopedist, suffered from a progressively debilitating, rare, neurologic condition that significantly impaired his capacity to perform what should have been common, uncomplicated knee and hip replacements, putting patients in harm’s way, NBC News reported.

Instead, during his flawed procedures, bones fractured, tendons ruptured, and nerves were severed. Patients required costly, painful, and unnecessary revision surgeries.