Chicago Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog

The Food and Drug Administration has issued an incredibly important warning to female consumers. The FDA is “warning women of child-bearing age that the epilepsy drug Topamax can increase the risk of birth defects around the mouth.” (Washington AP, 3/4). The drug, which is marketed by Johnson & Johnson “to control seizures cause by epilepsy…[and] is also used to relieve migraine headaches.” Consumers should also remember there is a generic drug known as topiramate has the same risks as Topomax.

The warning follows data collected from a registry of pregnant women, which suggests that a baby is more likely to have cleft lip and cleft palate if their mother took Topamax during the first trimester.

Women taking any form of the drug should consult with her doctor immediately regarding pregnancy. As a Chicago area Medical Malpractice attorney, I urge all women who are pregnant are who are planning to become pregnant to consult with their doctors about the risks associated with Topamax or its generic.

According to a new study, “Pregnant women could -- and probably should -- consume 10 times more vitamin D than experts currently recommend.” (Denise Mann, 5/1, CNN).

This study interestingly contradicts medical advice that has persisted for decades. Doctors have cautioned pregnant women that consuming too much vitamin D could potentially cause birth defects. For example, “under current guidelines anything over 2,000 IU per day is still considered potentially unsafe for anyone, not just pregnant women.” However, the new study suggests that much Vitamin D is “not only safe during pregnancy, but doubling it may actually reduce the risk of complications.”

Of course, pregnant women should never change their vitamin intake without consulting their physicians. One potential shortcoming is that the study looked only at women in their second trimester and beyond, and since organs are formed in the first trimester, it is not clear if higher dosages of Vitamin D would be dangerous at earlier stages. Although this research is not conclusively established yet, new guidelines regarding Vitamin D intake during pregnancy are expected to be announced this summer. As a medical malpractice attorney, I am intrigued by the results of this study, but feel as though further study is likely warranted before any drastic changes to pregnancy guidelines are promulgated.

The Chicago Daily Law Bulletin posted a recent trial success of Hurley, McKenna, & Mertz regarding a major birth injury case (2/4). Attorneys Christopher T. Hurley and Mark R. McKenna were able to obtain a $9 million verdict for our client, “a disabled 20-year-old man whose mother claimed her son sustained severe brain damage and spastic quadriplegia as the result of an injury during his birth at Cook County Hospital.”

Amelia Saragosa visited the Cook County hospital’s emergency room with labor pains on January 21, 1990. Shortly thereafter, an amniotomy, which is an “intentional rupture of the fetal membranes,” was performed causing the umbilical cord to become trapped. The child, who was the plaintiff in this case, was deprived of blood flow and oxygen as a result, making an emergency Caesarean section a necessity. 41 minutes passed between the time when the need for an emergency C-section was apparent and the procedure was performed.

As trial lawyers, we have both experience and success with similar and equally as saddening medical malpractice cases. We have tried cases involving amniotomy, cord prolapse, brain injury, cerebral palsy, and other birth injuries.

Recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine discusses the new technology available to measure fetal oxygen saturation levels during labor. This technique would replace or supplement information from fetal monitoring. The study concludes that the new technology will not reduce cesarean rates. N Engl J Med 355;21 November 23, 2006

As a medical malpractice lawyer I am pleased to see that at least some people are trying to limit medical malpractice awards by improving safety rather than limiting the amount a victim of malpractice can be awarded by a jury. I learned in college economics that if you want sell less of something then charge more for it. If you want less medical malpractice do not make it less expensive to commit malpractice. By making it expensive to commit medical malpractice people find ways to prevent it.

Laura Landro of the Wall Street Journal reports such an initiative:

Despite years of efforts to fix the nation's error-ridden health-care system, leading safety experts say Americans aren't much safer than they were five years ago -- and too many conflicting safety programs may be part of the problem. Now, a coalition of health-care purchasers, quality groups and government agencies working with the National Quality Forum, the leading government advisory body on health-care quality measurement and standards, have agreed for the first time to endorse a single set of 30 'safe practices' that all hospitals should use to prevent death and injury to patients. The agreement comes after a two-year effort to harmonize the dizzying and often conflicting array of safety guidelines that have sprung up since 2000 in response to the landmark Institute of Medicine report, 'To Err Is Human,' which found that as many as 100,000 patients die each year from medical mistakes."

Laura Landro, Wall Street Journal, 11/1/06 (Subscription Only)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116234626074809703.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal

As a medical malpractice lawyer I am pleased to see that at least some people are trying to limit medical malpractice awards by improving safety rather than limiting the amount a victim of malpractice can be awarded by a jury. I learned in college economics that if you want sell less of something then charge more for it. If you want less medical malpractice do not make it less expensive to commit malpractice. By making it expensive to commit medical malpractice people find ways to prevent it.

Laura Landro of the Wall Street Journal reports such an initiative:

Despite years of efforts to fix the nation's error-ridden health-care system, leading safety experts say Americans aren't much safer than they were five years ago -- and too many conflicting safety programs may be part of the problem. Now, a coalition of health-care purchasers, quality groups and government agencies working with the National Quality Forum, the leading government advisory body on health-care quality measurement and standards, have agreed for the first time to endorse a single set of 30 'safe practices' that all hospitals should use to prevent death and injury to patients. The agreement comes after a two-year effort to harmonize the dizzying and often conflicting array of safety guidelines that have sprung up since 2000 in response to the landmark Institute of Medicine report, 'To Err Is Human,' which found that as many as 100,000 patients die each year from medical mistakes."

Laura Landro, Wall Street Journal, 11/1/06 (Subscription Only)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116234626074809703.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal

As a Chicago medical malpractice lawyer I have seen hundreds of severe injuries which could have been prevented with simple safety precautions. It has always been interesting to me that whenever there is a plane crash there is a massive investigation done by the NTSB to determine the cause and procedures are instituted to make sure it never happens again. I have often wondered why the medical profession has not done more to evaluate mistakes and make sure that they do not happen again.

Now Kate Murphy of the New York Times reports that the medical profession is starting to learn from pilots:

Spurred by a 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academies, titled “To Err Is Human,” which estimated that as many as 98,000 patients die annually from preventable medical errors, and by more recent bad publicity from mistakes like amputations of the wrong limbs, many health care providers are redoubling their efforts to improve patient safety.

“We’re where the airline industry was 30 years ago” when a series of fatal mistakes increased scrutiny and provoked change, said Dr. Stephen B. Smith, chief medical officer at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, the teaching hospital for the University of Nebraska.

It is well established that, like airplane crashes, the majority of adverse events in health care are the result of human error, particularly failures in communication, leadership and decision-making.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/health/31safe.html

Jaymes Song of the Associated Press reports that a brain damaged baby was awarded $16.5 million by a federal judge in Hawaii. Instead of oxygen the baby was given carbon dioxide until he was permanently brain damaged:

A minute into Izzy Peterson's life, a doctor administered what she believed to be oxygen to give the newborn's breathing a boost. But for 41 minutes, Izzy was accidentally given carbon dioxide, which slowly ate away at his life. Izzy, born healthy on Jan. 14, 2005, is now silent with severe brain damage. He breathes through a tube in his neck and eats through another connected to his stomach. The 1 year old requires around-the-clock nursing care at his home in San Antonio and is expected to die before he turns 30. Chief U.S. District Judge David Ezra on Thursday ruled the federal government must pay the boy's family $16.5 million in damages, which is believed to be the largest verdict for a single person in a personal injury case in Hawaii."

Jaymes Song, Associated Press, Dallas Morning News, 10/20/06
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8KS5V483.html

I think it is important to note that this is a judge making this award and not a jury. While the amount may seem high to some people, the fact is that it takes millions of dollars to care for a brain damaged child.

Group B strep is a common bacteria which can complicate a pregnancy and severely injure a new born if not treated properly and in a timely fashion. Pregnant mothers should be screened for the bacteria prior to delivery and given antibiotics when necessary. Also bacteria is known to lead to premature labor in some cases. A recent settlement in California for just under $1 million arose out of the failure to react to a positive group B strep test.

I recently settled a case for $7.5 million where a mother was not given antibiotics in a timely fashion in the face of a clear group B strep infection.