Articles Posted in Misdiagnosis

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In a tragic medical malpractice case, Jeanette Turner, who was just 42 years old, suffered permanent brain damage at Mercy Hospital and Medical Center in 2006. It was alleged in the Cook County lawsuit that several doctors chose not to monitor and maintain her tracheotomy tube, which caused her injury after a blood clot lodged inside her tube cutting off her air supply.

This all started when Turner visited Mercy Hospital in February 2005 looking for treatment for a soft tissue infection in her jaw and neck. The infection caused Turner’s throat to swell so physicians surgically installed a tracheotomy tube to allow her to breathe.

Before the tracheotomy procedure, she had undergone another surgery to receive a heart valve replacement. Because of that heart surgery she had been prescribed anticoagulant Coumadin, which she would have to take for the rest of her life.

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On Jan. 12, 2009, Paul Vanderhoof was admitted to the hospital for the surgical removal of his gallbladder. This procedure is also called a cholecystectomy. During the surgery, the surgeon, Dr. Richard Berk, severed the patient’s common bile duct after he misidentified it as the cystic duct. Another surgeon was brought in to perform emergency reconstructive surgery to repair the severed duct.

Vanderhoof remained in the hospital for a week after the surgery during which time he was treated for an intermittent, controlled bile leak. A day after his discharge from the hospital he was readmitted with complaints of chest and abdominal pain. For the next two months, Vanderhoof remained an inpatient at two hospitals and a rehab nursing facility. He continued to suffer bile leakage, develop a large liver abscess and pneumonia and ultimately died of septic shock in the hospital on March 19, 2009.

Vanderhoof’s wife, Doris, brought a wrongful death and survival action lawsuit against the surgeon Dr. Berk and NorthShore University HealthSystem. Dr. Berk’s practice, NorthShore University HealthSystem Faculty Practice Associates, was later added as a defendant. When Doris Vanderhoof died, her daughter, Carol Vanderhoof, became the special administrator of her father’s estate. She filed an amended complaint claiming that during her father’s bile duct surgery, Dr. Berk “negligently and carelessly surgically transected” the common bile duct, “failed to perform the necessary precautionary methods to ensure a safe gallbladder removal,” and “failed to call for assistance from a specialist with expertise in biliary surgery” before cutting the common bile duct.

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Jeannette Collins, 46, complained of abdominal pain, vomiting and nausea. She underwent testing, including a CT scan, at a hospital emergency room. The scan revealed a small bowel obstruction.

General surgeons Dr. Ahmad Nuriddin and Dr. Manohar Nallathambi performed surgery on Collins during which they identified a purported gastric outlet obstruction. Because of that blockage, a second procedure was done, which severed a nerve to reduce the reduction of acid. As a consequence of the surgery gone bad, Collins developed paralysis of the stomach and intestines. She now requires a diet of pureed foods.

Collins filed a lawsuit against the general surgeons, Drs. Nuriddin and Nallathambi and their practices, claiming they misdiagnosed her as having a gastric outlet obstruction and performed a second surgery without informed consent. Collins also claimed that these defendants should have ordered a preoperative upper endoscopy study, which would have ruled out gastric outlet obstruction.

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Michael Wagner was 48 and weighed 600 pounds. He underwent gastric bypass surgery performed by general surgeon Hans Schmidt M.D. and an assistant surgeon Sabastian Eid M.D. Wagner had been taking prophylactic the blood thinner, Heparin preoperatively.

After the surgery, the dosage Wagner was receiving was reduced to once per day. During the first postoperative day, he experienced a slow heartrate and respiratory arrest. However, Wagner was discharged the next day with instructions to have 64 ounces of daily fluids and to take frequent walks. No blood thinners like Heparin were prescribed.

Two days later, Wagner suffered a fatal pulmonary embolism. He had been a financial manager earning about $140,000 annually and is survived by his wife, one minor child and one adult child.

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Unfortunately, there are too many medical or hospital related errors that have injured or killed patients in the United States. According to a recent study by the Institute of Medicine, “Most people will experience at least one wrong or delayed diagnosis at some point in their lives, a blind spot in modern medicine that can have devastating consequences.” The institute’s report calls for urgent changes in many areas of health care. According to the report, the most significant change is that patients become central to a solution, said Dr. John Ball of the American College of Physicians. He chaired the Institute of Medicine committee.

The report indicates that medical providers must take patients’ complaints more seriously and make sure that the patient receives copies of test results and other records to encourage patients to ask, “Could it be something else?”

In other words, patients should be seeking other opinions from physicians to diagnose their ailments. This is a cultural shift. It could be the norm to finally get the right diagnosis or that the second opinion doctor calls the treating doctors to say it turned out to be this and not that. One of the most famous diagnostic errors occurred in 2014 when a Liberian man who was sick with Ebola initially was misdiagnosed in a Dallas emergency room as having sinusitis. The man returned two days later and eventually died.

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Carl Beauchamp, 44, fell and hit his head. He was taken to Rhode Island Hospital where he underwent testing and was released with instructions to return if he noticed changes in his state of mind. Beauchamp, who initially was able to walk, talk and respond to commands after the fall, later became confused. He returned to the hospital.

A neurosurgery resident examined him and diagnosed his condition as post-concussive syndrome. Beauchamp was admitted to a general medical floor. During a critical 40-hour period when neuro-checks were required frequently, hospital nurses performed just one check.

Beauchamp’s condition worsened to where he responded to only painful stimuli and was unable to blink, talk and follow instructions or commands.

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On July 30, 2008, Isaiah Lockhart went to the Haymarket Center, a chemical dependency facility. Lockhart had a history of alcohol withdrawal. However, when Lockhart complained of “shortness of breath, dizziness, a productive cough and weight loss,” he was sent to get a medical evaluation.

Lockhart went by ambulance to the emergency room at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital, a/k/a Cook County Hospital. He arrived at 10:26 p.m. and was triaged. His symptoms were documented and his vital signs recorded. At midnight he was brought into a treatment room and assessed by a nurse, who again recorded his vital signs.

At no point was his cardiac rhythm evaluated. Lockhart was left alone in the room for a short time and at 12:20 a.m. he was found in cardiac arrest. After a prolonged course of emergency treatment, his heart was successfully restarted, but the lack of oxygen left Lockhart with severe encephalopathy and in a persistent vegetative state.

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Paul Bartholomew, 73, had a history of prostate cancer and placement of an inferior vena cava (IVC) filter to protect him from blood clots. Ten years after receiving the IVC filter, he reported he had blood in his urine. When he saw his family physician, Dr. Ina Itzkovitz, she prescribed an antibiotic and ordered testing to rule out cancer.

Bartholomew returned to Dr. Itzkovitz complaining of the new onset of low back pain, bilateral leg stiffness, fatigue and low blood pressure. Dr. Itzkovitz ordered an X-ray, diagnosed arthritis and prescribed pain medication.

Just two days later, he died. The cause of death was determined to be internal bleeding caused by a damaged IVC vein which came on by an eroded IVC filter. In the lawsuit that was filed, the doctor was alleged to have misdiagnosed those symptoms. Bartholomew was survived by his four adult children.

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Koni Johnson filed suit against two emergency physicians and their employer, Cook County, alleging the doctors were negligent in their treatment of her spinal cord injury. She had gone to John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital, a/k/a Cook County Hospital a day after she slipped and fell injuring her back.

Johnson alleged that the county violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (42 U.S.C. Section 1395dd) by choosing not to provide appropriate screening and to stabilize her medical condition before discharging her.

Cook County, which owns and operates Stroger Hospital, requested summary judgment based on Sections 6-105 and 6-106 of the Local Governmental and Governmental Employees Tort Immunity Act. The defendants argued they had provided appropriate treatment for the condition the emergency room doctors diagnosed, which was muscle spasm and back and buttocks bruises.

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This case was resolved in a confidential settlement. It dealt with an injury to a 50-year-old woman who underwent a hysterectomy performed by an obstetrician. During the surgery, it was revealed that a surgical sponge was missing. The doctor then performed a cystoscopy to examine the woman’s bladder and also repaired the bladder, which had been torn during the hysterectomy.

The obstetrician failed to notice that the woman’s ureters had been sutured closed during the bladder repair. The ureter is the tube that takes urine from the kidneys to the urinary bladder. There are two ureters. Each of the two ureters is attached to a kidney.

The woman suffered damage to both kidneys because of the sutured closed ureters and now suffers from frequent urinary tract infections and urinary stress incontinence.

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