Topics: Medical Malpractice - 1498 results

Dr. David Chao, the head physician for the San Diego Chargers, lost a $7.5 million medical malpractice suit in August based on his prescription of a faulty cold-therapy medical device to a knee surgery patient. Chao operated on Whitney Engler’s knee in 2003 and then directed her to use the Polar Care 500. After she developed frostbite on her knee and suffered permanent damage, she sued Chao, his medical practice, and Breg, Inc. – the manufacturer of the device.   …

Need a new hip, some dental work, perhaps a gastric bypass, but don’t have the cash or insurance to cover it? Millions of Americans are choosing foreign destinations for medical or cosmetic procedures to escape the expensive U.S. health care system. In some cases, insurance carriers even encourage the aptly-named practice of medical tourism to cut down on their own costs. It sounds almost too good to be true: Get affordable treatment in an exotic location which, even with airfare …

Over three years after the death of a beloved Syracuse, N.Y. high school basketball coach, Joseph Mazella, a jury decided that a doctor who prescribed Paxil and other antidepressants to him over the phone must pay $1.5 million to Mazella’s widow. Since 2007, the makers of Paxil and other antidepressants were ordered by the Food and Drug Administration to add warnings that the drugs increase suicidal thinking. Janice Mazella had just gotten out of the shower one morning when she …

A doctor who performed a flaming C-section on a patient is not liable for the woman’s burn injuries, a jury ruled last month. Stephen Brown, an obstetrician at Crouse Hospital in New York, was conducting a cesarean section on Kira Reed in March 2010 to deliver her second child. During the operation, Reed noticed a strange odor in the air. “I could not come up with the word for what I was smelling,” she told a local news source. “It did …

A doctor has been ordered to pay $6 million for leaving a 18-inch sponge inside a cancer patient on whom she was operating. In 2005, Geraldine Nicholson, a 55-year old wife and mother of three, went under the knife to have cancerous tissue in her rectum and colon removed. The surgeon, Dr. Arleen Thom, left a surgical sponge inside Nicholson’s abdomen before closing her up. The 18-inch by 18-inch sponge caused infections and then prevented Nicholson from being able to …