Cerebral Palsy - Causes and Treatments

Posted on behalf of Daniel L. Clayton, selected as the ‘Nashville Best Lawyers Medical Malpractice Law – Plaintiffs Lawyer of the Year’ for 2012, in medical malpractice

About two to three children out of every 1,000 in the United States suffer from cerebral palsy. It affects people of all ethnicities, sexes and socioeconomic groups. Cerebral palsy is a physical disability of the brain that causes many hardships, both financial and emotional, for children and their families.
Types:
There are three different types of cerebral palsy. The first is spastic cerebral palsy in which the child is stiff and has difficulty with movement. The second type is athetoid cerebral palsy where the child has uncontrolled and involuntary movements. The last type is ataxic cerebral palsy where the child has difficulty with balance and depth perception.
Symptoms:
Symptoms of cerebral palsy appear within the first three years of life. Common symptoms include:
•· Abnormal muscle tone resulting in slouching
•· Delay of developmental milestones, including speaking or crawling
•· Problems with feeding and sucking
•· Unusual crawling
•· Stiff or floppy movements
•· Poor balance
•· Easily startled
•· Awkward positioning when lying down
•· Coordination problems
•· Hearing or eyesight issues
•· Problems with bowel or bladder control
•· Seizures
•· Limited range of motion
•· Swallowing problems
Causes:
Cerebral palsy is caused by damage to the cerebrum. The cerebrum is the part of the brain responsible for many things including: muscle control, learning ability, memory and communication. It can be caused by complications before the baby is born.
Cerebral palsy is sometimes caused by the negligence of doctors or nurses during labor and delivery. If the doctor improperly uses forceps, fails to properly monitor the baby’s heartbeat or fails to ensure that the baby is receiving oxygen, it can cause damage to the cerebrum, causing the baby to develop cerebral palsy.
Treatments:
Cerebral palsy cannot be cured and treatment usually involves multiple medical professionals who help parents to assist in their children’s development. Treatment can include therapy, medication, braces or surgery. Treatment will be different for every child and may be very expensive depending upon the child’s needs.
What Can You Do:
Raising a child with cerebral palsy is often a very expensive undertaking due to the necessary treatment. If your child has cerebral palsy and you believe negligence caused by doctors or nurses during delivery is the cause, consider contacting an attorney specializing in medical malpractice.
Source: “Cerebral Palsy,” emedicinehealth.com

Tags: Medical Malpractice, cerebral palsy, medical mistakes

Posted in Medical Malpractice|Tagged cerebral palsy, Medical Malpractice, medical mistakes|Leave a comment

Wrong-Site Surgery - It Just Should Never Happen

Posted on behalf of Daniel Clayton, selected as the ‘Nashville Best Lawyers Medical Malpractice Law – Plaintiffs Lawyer of the Year’ for 2012, in Medical Malpractice

A wrong-site surgery is a type of surgical error in which a surgeon either accidentally operates on a healthy body part or negligently operates on the wrong patient. These errors seem far-fetched and rare, but there is a report out of Chicago that wrong-site surgeries happen approximately 40 times per week across the country.
These types of surgical errors have been addressed previously. The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare examines hospitals and health care facilities in order to determine if they are following protocols. If the Commission is satisfied that these universal surgery protocols are being followed, it will accredit the hospital. Thus far, the Commission has accredited over 19,000 facilities across the country.
So what are these procedures and why is the rate of wrong-site surgery still so high? One procedure is to mark the correct body part with a marker prior to surgery. While this should decrease the number of surgical errors, the Chicago Sun-Times reports that some hospitals use markers with washable ink. When the patient is being prepared for surgery, the ink washes away and the risk of a wrong-site surgery is increased.
The Commission has also recommended that everyone take a brief timeout before the surgery starts double check what procedure will be done and make sure that it will be done on the correct patient. The Commission says, however, that not all surgeons and surgery support staff fully participate in the time out process, increasing the risk to patients.
Overall, the Commission found 29 specific places in which hospitals and surgeons are allowing errors in the process. The Commission believes these areas are a cause of the high rate of wrong-site surgeries.
Source: Chicago Sun-Times, “Surgical errors happen as much as 40 times a week around country despite guidelines,” Monifa Thomas, 4 July 2011
Tags: Medical Malpractice, Surgical error, Wrong-Site Surgeries

Posted in Medical Malpractice|Tagged Medical Malpractice, surgical errors, Wrong-Site Surgeries|Leave a comment

Avoiding Surgical Errors

Posted on behalf of Daniel Clayton, selected as the ‘Nashville Best Lawyers Medical Malpractice Law – Plaintiffs Lawyer of the Year’ for 2012, in medical malpractice

A former Army mechanic from Ohio was recently awarded $275,000 in a medical malpractice case after a VA surgical team left two 11 x 14 inch towels in his body after removing a cancerous kidney.
The surgical oversight required 47-year-old Robert Sanner to undergo multiple follow-up exams, including a CT scan that revealed the error, then two additional surgeries ─ first to remove the towels and later to repair an incisional hernia caused by the second surgery, according to an account on Outpatientsurgery.net. Sanner missed a year of work due to the surgical errors.
I have seen the devastating effects of Surgical errors- operating on the wrong leg, leaving in sponges due to an incorrect sponge count, leaving a surgical instrument in, operating on the wrong back level and, perhaps the saddest, one dear lady who went in to have her cancerous kidney removed, but the surgeon removed her good kidney. Despite a vigorous and determined fight against the cancer, she died about a year and a half later. If he had removed the cancerous kidney – it would have been a total and complete cure.
“Never-Events” More Common Than Expected
The National Quality Forum lists Sanner’s situation as a “never-event” ─ a preventable medical mistake that should never happen. Others include operating on the wrong body part, as well as medical mistakes that lead to death or serious personal injury. But how common are these incidents?
Towels, sponges, needles and other surgical instruments are left inside one of every 1,000 to 1,500 people who undergo abdominal surgery, according to Findarticles.com. The problem is the traditional counting procedure, which is subject to human error.
Counting Objects is Useful but Flawed
While it is widely used, counting relies on total accuracy in a chaotic environment characterized by distraction, interruption and strict time constraints. To test its reliability, researchers at a major academic health care center in New York recently reviewed surgical incident reports from 2000 through 2004. The findings were:
•· Among 153,263 surgical procedures, there were 1,062 counting discrepancies ─ a rate of 0.69 percent
•· One in 7,000 surgeries involved a retained item ─ or one in 70 counting discrepancy cases
•· Final count discrepancies prevented 54 percent of retained items
•· Count discrepancies increased with the length of the surgery, the number of nursing teams and when surgery was performed on an emergency basis, or on a weekend or holiday
Counting plays an essential role in preventing retained objects from being left in surgical patients, but the practice has serious limitations. Additional safety measures, such as mandatory x-rays during long or emergency procedures and equipment screening systems that detect surgical objects are necessary to improve patient safety.
Source: “Lessons Learned From Retained Object Lawsuit,” Outpatient Surgery, 12/16/11

Tags: medical malpractice, surgical errors

Posted in Medical Malpractice|Tagged Medical Malpractice, surgical errors|Leave a comment

The Role Fatigue Plays in Surgical Errors

Whenever anyone goes in for any type of surgical procedure, it’s natural to want to believe that the surgeon involved is well-rested and that fatigue would not be impairing their decisions. And while this may be the case with many surgeons, a recent study looking at first-year surgical residents found the opposite to be a true roughly a quarter of the time. In fact, 27 percent of the time, their fatigue was on par with the mental “impairment” of someone who is intoxicated. Naturally, this level of fatigue also increased their hypothetical chances of making medical mistakes.
The study examined orthopedic surgical residents at two separate hospitals. These residents were initially asked questions related to their sleep and exercise habits, as well as their use of any sedatives, alcohol or other stimulants. In addition, the residents all wore an “actigraphy” type of wristwatch that would record a person’s movement in order to determine their level of activity.
From here, researchers found that on average, residents get roughly five and a half hours of sleep and were only using about 70 percent of their mental effectiveness about a quarter of the time. By only using 70 percent of their mental effectiveness, researchers also found there to be a 22 percent greater risk of them making some sort of a medical mistake than those doctors who had gotten enough rest.
However, when looking at this study and the amount of risk, it is important to note that the risk is a prediction that was based on how tired the residents were. The actual number of medical mistakes was not assessed in this study.
This study was also started in 2010 and went into 2011. During this time, rules were put in place that bars a first-year resident from working longer than a 16 hour shift. And while one can argue that the rule was put in place as a way to try and combat fatigue in the field, researchers from this study point to the fact that there is a good chance that more still needs to be done to prevent fatigue.
Source: Reuters, “Tired surgical residents may up error risk: study,” Andrew M. Seaman, May 21, 2012
Tags: Medical Malpractice, Surgical Error

Posted in Medical Malpractice|Tagged Medical Malpractice, surgical errors|Leave a comment