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Birth Injury Victims May Have a New Treatment Option

Cerebral palsy is a lifelong condition caused by a brain injury. When a baby's brain is injured, whether in the womb, during the birth process, or in the first three years of life, the child can develop cerebral palsy. A new drug has been developed that has shown potential to improve the condition of cerebral palsy sufferers. There is no known cure for cerebral palsy at this time and the treatment options are limited. Typically, treatment has focused on relieving...

Genetic Testing and Wrongful Birth Claims Medical Malpractice

The availability of genetic testing to identify a host of medical conditions has left parents and the courts with difficult decisions. A couple in Montana is suing their health care provider for wrongful birth based on the failure to perform the genetic test that would have informed them that their daughter would have cystic fibrosis at birth. The couple claims that they would have ended the pregnancy if they had known about the life-threatening lung disease in advance. The couple's...

Dirty Needles? Hospital Negligence?

A number of hospital and clinic patients around the country are developing MRSA infections linked to dirty needles. MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, is a staph infection that is resistant to antibiotics. Patients can develop MRSA infections when medical professionals reuse disposable single-use needles on multiple patients. MRSA infections are just one potential risk associated with the reuse of needles of multiple patients. Other possible consequences of this type of medical negligence include transmitting serious diseases such as HIV, hepatitis...

Medical Malpractice Due To Hospital Understaffing

In yesterday's post we discussed a recent study which found that many medical malpractice injuries are attributable to hospital understaffing. Researchers found that adding a single patient to a nurse's workload increased the risk of catheter-related urinary tract infections and surgery-site infections. While increasing a nurse's workload was linked to a proportional number of new urinary tract infections, a 10 percent workload increase could cause a 50 percent jump in surgical site infections. This is concerning because surgical site infections are...

Tips To Prevent Hospital Injuries

In our last post we discussed medical malpractice and some of the costs associated with tort reform and settling a case too early. Although medical malpractice litigation is an important way of holding healthcare providers accountable for mistakes, it is much better to avoid unnecessary complications and infections from the onset. A recent article published by ProPublica reminds patients that they need to be their own best advocates to avoid many medical malpractice mistakes and unnecessary complications. For example, the...