Medical Issues
Anesthesia - Dermatology
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Anesthesia
Anesthesia claims usually involve partial or
complete loss of sensation. Injuries or death from
anesthesia errors are separated into six types of
anesthesia as follows:
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Local Anesthesia deals with
the administration of anesthesia into the skin or local
nerves which result in permanent injury to nerve.
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Regional Anesthesia deals
with the blockage of nerves and can cause permanent injury
to the nerves.
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Spinal Anesthesia involves
the injection of the anesthetic agent directly into the
subarachnoid space of the spinal cord and can cause
conditions such as paralysis.
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Epidural Anesthesia
involves the injection of an anesthetic agent like novocaine
or lidocaine into the epidural space near the spinal cord
region and nerve roots, and can cause bleeding and
paralysis. This anesthetic is frequently used in labor and
delivery.
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General Anesthesia is
administered in a variety of ways to obtain a total lack of
consciousness and paralysis. Not only can death result but
also permanent vegetative states can result usually from a
lack of proper monitoring. The anesthesiologist is
responsible for the welfare and life of the patient during
the surgery and immediately thereafter.
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Dental Anesthesia is
usually of the local anesthetic variety and can result in
tongue and lip numbness or paralysis.
This is probably the most difficult area in
which to prove medical malpractice. Our case experience ranges
from oral cancer to colorectal cancer. The cases have involved
rare brain lesions such as astrocytomas to uterine or
endometrial cancer. We have handled cases involving breast,
lung, stomach, colon, ovarian, hodgkins, lymphatic, skin, and
thyroid cancers. The law requires the patient to prove not only
a negligent failure to diagnose the cancer but also that the
failure to diagnose the cancer either caused the patient's death
or significantly reduced the patient's chance of survival from
the cancer.
This specialty of medicine relates to the heart.
Most people (85%) survive heart attacks. However, our experience
is that far too many people with clinical signs and symptoms
indicating a serious cardiac condition are turned away from the
emergency room or from the urgent care office, or family
doctor's office in the United States just to go home and die
needlessly. We have had many cases in which the patient should
have been kept in the hospital, administered proper tests and
given acceptable and recognized drugs, thereby avoiding an
untimely death. The drugs available today are miracle drugs
compared to ten years ago. It is simply negligent to send these
people home without an admission to the hospital, or without
thorough heart testing and a complete evaluation. For example,
patients with angina (chest pain), elevated cardiac enzymes,
irregular heartbeat, hypertension, or family history of heart
disease, etc. should not go home without a full and thorough
workup to rule out life threatening ailments.
Cardiology (Invasive)
A relatively new area commonly used by some
cardiologists (and radiologists) is invading the blood vessels
for various reasons, such as to remove clots or to open up
clogged arteries. This has caused great concern and led to
numerous medical malpractice cases such as perforating the
vessel and causing intense bleeding which leads to death or
disability. Failure to recognize these mistakes and take
aggressive steps to save the patient has led to substantial
verdicts against these practitioners.
Our cases have ranged from numb lips following
extraction of third molars (wisdom teeth) to death from dental
anesthesia. They have ranged from numb tongues due to trauma to
the lingual nerve to complete loss of mandible or jawbone. The
latter resulted from an infection following dental implants
leading to osteomyelitis of the mandible. Another tragic result
occurred when a brain abscess developed from a simple but
untreated tooth abscess causing brain injury and neurologic
deficits.
This would not seem a likely area of medicine
that would lead to actionable malpractice; however, we have
handled numerous dermatologic medical malpractice cases. One
area is the failure to differentiate a simple benign skin lesion
from a melanoma, which is an aggressive malignant lesion that
can have tragic consequences and death. We have represented
clients who have had dermatologic procedures known as dermal
abrasion that transverse the upper layers of skin and caused
permanent scarring. Most recently we have seen cases of the
misuse of laser treatments causing permanent scarring.
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