Mississippi Injury Lawyers Blog

A recent press release from the Food and Drug Administration left many consumers worried about the safety of their medications. The FDA revealed that over the course of the last few months, an investigation has uncovered possibly life-threatening safety issues at more than 30 compounding pharmacies across the country. The issues were discovered after the deadly fungal meningitis outbreak prompted closer scrutiny of the nation's specialized pharmacies.

An especially scary example of the problems present in the nation's compounding pharmacies was found in Florida where the FDA said it discovered medicine with floating black particles. At a different pharmacy, inspectors with the FDA discovered rust and mold in supposed "clean rooms." Dozens of facilities had problems with their sterilization procedures, including allowing workers into rooms with medicine despite having tears in their gloves. All these violations are serious and could be responsible for yet another deadly outbreak like the one started in Massachusetts.

Continue reading "FDA Launches Investigation Into Compounding Pharmacies In The Wake Of Deadly Fungal Meningitis Outbreak" »

Hospitals have done a lot in recent years to curb the thousands of unnecessary deaths and injuries that take place in medical facilities each year. Hand-washing campaigns and fancy germ fighting equipment have been used to try and prevent some of the avoidable medical complications that occur each year. One troubling detail that has recently been brought to light is how lucrative such complications can be to a hospital's bottom line.

In a very grim report, researchers from Harvard Medical School published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association which found that surgical complications from infections and procedure-related strokes were typically twice as lucrative as operations that went smoothly.

The study was meant to highlight how it might be difficult to continue to push for safety reforms in the medical industry when hospitals have a vested financial interest not to do so. The study focused on 34,000 surgeries performed at Texas Health, a large hospital network in Dallas.

Continue reading "Scary Study Reveals That Medical Complications Actually Help Hospitals' Bottom Lines" »

The use of da Vinci robotic surgery systems has exploded in recent years according to one report, with 400,000 procedures being performed with the help of the robot last year. The corresponding growth in adverse events reports filed with the FDA has resulted in increased scrutiny by the agency over how safe the robots really are.

Use of the robotic surgery systems, namely da Vinci, the only system approved by the FDA for soft tissue operations, has increased threefold in only four years. Recently, the system has been linked with several deaths and a few troubling incidents in the operating room. The question that the FDA must now decide is whether the benefits of robotic surgery outweigh the obvious risks.

Continue reading "Growth In Robotic Surgery Raises Safety Concerns" »

A 69-year-old man from Gretna, MS has filed suit claiming an especially horrific incident of medical malpractice. The disturbing story claims that the man awoke during an eye surgery to discover that his mouth had been taped shut by doctors.

The man, Hector L. Alonso, sued Tulane University Medical Center and two doctors that performed the surgery, Franklin Rawlings and Shehab A. Ebrahim. The court filings also claim that Alonso is now blind in his right eye after the botched surgery.

Papers describe the surgery as "torture." Alonso claims that after he awoke, he insisted that doctors stop his procedure. He claims that the surgeon then placed tape over his mouth to stifle his protests and that other medical staff in the room held him down and gagged him, apparently using enough force that one of his teeth was knocked out and later swallowed during the procedure.

Continue reading "Mississippi Man Claims He Was Victim of Surgical "Torture"" »

During the middle of March 2013 a jury in Los Angeles decided that a former prison guard from Montana, Loren Kransky, was entitled to $8.3 million in damages for harm caused by Johnson & Johnson's DePuy subsidiary's metal hip implant.

The jury found that the ASR XL implant caused metal poisoning and other health problems for Kransky and were severe enough to cause the man to undergo painful revision surgery to remove the defective device. The jury found that DePuy knowingly marketed a faulty device and owed the injured patient millions as a result. However, the jury did not find that the company had acted with malice. This is important because it prevented Kransky from colleting punitive damages.

Continue reading "DePuy Metal Hip Implant Case Results in Millions in Damages" »

The CDC recently warned about the potentially deadly new superbug that poses special problems for hospitals and nursing homes in Mississippi. The bacteria, known as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), cannot be killed by most antibiotics.

The worry among health providers is that CRE poses a special threat to patients across the country because, in addition to its antibiotic resistance, the bacteria is incredibly deadly, with an unusually high mortality rate. The final factor that makes CRE so troubling to doctors is that the bacteria has a habit of spreading its antibiotic resistance to other bacteria, like E. coli. This could make treating other common illnesses much more difficult.

Continue reading "CDC Warns Of Dangers of New Superbug" »

The first of more than 3,000 cases filed against Takeda Pharmaceuticals over it's once popular diabetes drug, Actos, is now underway. A witness recently testified that the pharmaceutical giant put sales ahead of consumer safety and allowed marketing concerns to trump patient health worries.

The witness, Howard Greenberg, was a clinical pharmacologist who had experience in the industry and based his testimony off emails sent between Takeda executives. The emails discussed the company's possible response to a warning by regulators across Europe and the U.S. that warning labels might be applied to Actos that described the possible risks associated with the development of bladder cancer.

Continue reading "First Of Thousands Of Cases About Risks of Actos Goes To Trial" »

A surgery patient in Germany has filed suit against the doctor and hospital responsible for a horribly botched surgery that left the man with 16 objects in his body. The man was in the hospital to have surgery for prostate cancer when everything went wrong.

The man's attorney, Annette Corinth, says that doctor had to go in later to remove a needle, compresses and surgical strips from her patient after his wounds had failed to properly heal from a surgery that took place in 2009.

The innocent patient was a 77-year-old who died last year. The man's family is now suing the doctor and hospital for $106,000 for damages related to his pain and suffering as well as medical expenses. So far the organization that runs the hospital has said they reject the claim and have admitted to no wrongdoing. The hospital has also said that the lawsuit asks for an unusually large amount of money, a statement that might shock many people who hear about the medical malpractice suit.

Continue reading "Suit Claims 16 Instruments Left Inside Patient Following Surgery" »

Patients in Mississippi go to see their doctors because they believe that doing so is the best way to ensure they recover from what's wrong with them. While that's usually true, there are sadly too many cases where turning to a doctor may subject a patient to even worse conditions then when they first walked into the office.

One recent study found that in the surgical world, some 4,000 plus errors happen each year which result in more than $1 billion in medical malpractice payouts. The saddest part of the news is how easily such errors can be prevented. Every single incident was caused by a human, not the result of a tragic illness. Things like leaving a sponge inside a patient's body or operating on the wrong part of the body may sound like tabloid fiction, but unfortunately happen almost every day, maybe even more often than that.

Continue reading "Surgical Mistakes Lead to $1 Billion in Payouts Each Year" »

A recent study revealed that missing a diagnosis, often of breast cancer, is the most common reason for a medical malpractice claim brought against a radiologist in the United States. The study, published in the journal Radiology, used data gathered from 1955 to 2010 and included the malpractice histories of 8,000+ radiologists. The doctors were from nearly every state in the country and a wide variety of practices.

According to the results, 2,600 of the radiologists, 31%, had at least one medical malpractice claim filed against them at some point in their career. The most common cause for such a suit was diagnostic error. The most frequently missed diagnosis, out of 1,000 human years, are the following:
• Breast cancer, 3.57 claims
• Fractures, 2.49 claims
• Spinal fractures, 1.32 claims
• Lung cancer, 1.26 claims
• Vascular disease, 1.08 claims

Beyond missing a diagnosis, another common reason for suing radiologists for malpractice is when complications related to procedures arise. Relative to other medical professionals there were very few claims for failure to recommend further testing or for inadequate communication.

Continue reading "Misdiagnosis Common Reason for Malpractice Suits Against Radiologists" »

When a patient in Mississippi goes to see their doctor, the hope is that they will receive appropriate treatment for the condition that is ailing them. Everyone assumes that the doctor will behave professionally and do nothing to undermine the doctor-patient trust that exists with all good physicians. Sadly, this isn't always the case.

Though many people may believe medical malpractice only exists when there has been incorrect treatment, inappropriate care, medical errors or mistakes, the Supreme Court of New York recently ruled that there are other scenarios where doctors can be found to have engaged in medical malpractice. Specifically, the New York High Court found that affairs between doctors and a patient could constitute medical malpractice.

The doctor at the center of the New York case had an affair with a married patient. The patient was under his direct care and he treated her for severe depression and anxiety issues. The jury found that the doctor had breached his professional duty of care by engaging in repeated sexual relationships with the woman. The jury did not believe the woman was blameless though, and found her responsible for 25% of the harm she suffered. The court ultimately awarded the woman $338,000 in damages.

Continue reading "In New York, Affairs Qualify as Medical Malpractice" »

Mississippi's Governor Phil Bryant has been trumpeting the state's tort reform laws as a major economic development according to papers filed in federal court. The governor made the claims in a filing before the court that will decide the constitutionality of the state's $1 million cap on non-economic damages.

The case, which began in 2006, will decide whether the state's cap on damages is unjust. The cap was put into place years ago after legislators complained that verdicts in the state had gotten too large, too fast and led to unfairly large awards for plaintiffs. The updated brief on the part of Governor Bryant filed in support of the measure was meant to inject life into the case after the 5th Circuit told attorneys for both sides that briefs needed to be updated.

The case is not expected to be resolved until sometime later this year. Attorneys have said the complexity of the case and possible further oral arguments may drag the matter out well into the New Year. It's also possible that the 5th Circuit will ask for additional briefs on certain specific legal issues.

The case was started in 2006 after a Mississippi woman was injured in an accident with a Sears truck near Philadelphia, MS. A jury in 2008 found that Sears was liable and awarded the woman $4 million in damages, though the verdict never identified which damages were noneconomic. It was later decided that $2.2 million of the overall verdict was noneconomic; a number that was later reduced by a federal judge to $1 million to align with Mississippi's law.

Continue reading "More Developments in Mississippi Tort Reform Case" »

According to a recent article in the New York Times, Clara Marshall, an older woman suffering from dementia, moved into a nursing home after her family was no longer able to provide the care she needed. Tragically, after only five months in the facility, Clara was found dead in her room, strangled after getting her neck caught in side rails meant to protect her from rolling out of bed.

It was only after her death, once her daughter had begun writing to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Food and Drug Administration that she discovered that both agencies had known for more than a decade about deaths associated with bed rails. She was shocked that two agencies devoted to ensuring consumer safety had failed to act despite years of warnings regarding the danger of such bed rails. After years of pushing by Ms. Marshall's daughter the FDA and the CPSC have finally launched an investigation into bed rail deaths.

Continue reading "Nursing Home Patients in Mississippi At Risk of Death Due to Bed Rails" »

A recent article discussed a terrifying new superbug that has caused chaos across the healthcare industry, leading to deaths even in major national hospitals. The bug, known as Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, is known for fighting off doctors' last line of defense, carbapenem antibiotics. The bacteria are causing serious concern among those in healthcare facilities, especially nursing homes, as it tends to prey on the most vulnerable patients.

The bacteria was in the news this summer after a CRE strain attacked the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center outside Washington, D.C. Seven people ultimately died as a result. Research shows that since the first case of a CRE infection was reported in a North Carolina hospital back in 2001, there have been thousands of CRE cases throughout the country, showing up as everything from pneumonia to intestinal and urinary tract infections.

Continue reading "Nursing Home Residents at Risk of Terrifying New Superbug" »

The recent outbreak of fungal meningitis has many in the medical community desperate to get to the bottom of the cause. Possibilities abound and everyone appears to have a theory. Could it have been some moldy ceiling tiles? What about the dirty shoes of a careless employee? How about a contaminated ingredient?

There are many ways the fungus could have gotten inside the New England Compounding Center, a pharmacy in Massachusetts that has been blamed for the outbreak. The steroid injections made by the compounding pharmacy have already been recalled after leading to the death of 14 people and sickness in nearly 200 more.

So far regulators from both state and federal agencies have been quiet about what problem may have led to the contamination. It has been revealed that inspectors found fungus growing in more than 50 vials from the pharmacy. FDA investigators remain on the scene in Farmingham, Massachusetts in an attempt to better understand what went wrong.

Continue reading "What caused the fungal meningitis outbreak?" »