Articles Posted in Surgical Errors

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The trial judge in a medical malpractice jury trial correctly adopted the jury instructions in the case over an alleged botched hernia surgery. The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed that ruling. The jury returned a verdict in the defendant’s favor.

The appellate court ruled that the trial judge did not err when giving jury instructions and that the instruction tendered was accurate and without undue repetition. Justice David W. Ellis delivered the opinion of the appellate court.

Jeffrey S. Goldberg sued Dr. N. Scott Peckler and North Suburban Surgical Consultants in the Circuit Court of Cook County. The lawsuit alleged negligence against Dr. Peckler and vicarious liability against North Suburban Surgical Consultants.
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Amanda Hoover delivered her child by cesarean section at Banner-University Medical Center. After the delivery, Hoover experienced chronic abdominal pain, intermittent fever and chills, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. She underwent testing and was later diagnosed as having a foreign body in the lumen of her sigmoid colon.

Hoover underwent surgery during which a surgical sponge and a 20-cm section of her sigmoid colon were surgically removed.

She sued Banner-University Medical Center and Banner University Medical Group alleging that leaving a surgical sponge in her body after the cesarean section delivery amounted to a deviation from the standard of care.
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Dr. Fangxiang Chen was an agent of Mercy Clinic East Communities.

Dr. Chen allegedly recommended that the plaintiff, Natalie Avilez, 39, undergo a minimally invasive right-sided microdiscectomy at T7-8. A microdiscectomy procedure is a type of minimally invasive discectomy commonly used to treat a herniated disc. When a herniated disc compresses a spinal nerve, symptoms can include pain (which may extend down one or both arms and legs, as is the case in sciatica), muscle weakness and difficulty with repetitive motions.

After the surgery, Avilez learned from Dr. Chen that he had operated on the wrong side of her spine and on the wrong level. The next day, Dr. Chen returned Avilez to surgery during which he performed a T6-7 laminectomy before intraoperative imaging showed he was still at the wrong level. Resulting from these incorrect surgeries, Avilez experienced additional pain and increased anxiety.
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Yahaira Perez, 39, experienced pain in her right upper quadrant. She went to a hospital emergency room where a CT scan revealed thickening of the colon and an incidental finding of an enlarged cervix with a 2.5 cm lesion.

Perez consulted her gynecologist, Dr. Mohammad Nizam, who scheduled her for emergency surgery to remove her cervix.

Post-operatively, the cervical pathology showed that Perez suffered from chronic cervicitis and a cyst instead of cancer. As a result of the unnecessary surgery, Perez suffered nerve damage and pelvic prolapse.
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Doe was admitted to a hospital to undergo a non-emergency medical procedure. During or because of the non-emergency surgery, something evidently did not go as planned.
Doe suffered permanent injuries that now require 24/7 care; he is unable to work.

Doe sued the physician, the downstate Illinois hospital, and a product manufacturer. There is very little information on this case, which resulted in a settlement of $29.5 million.

The attorneys successfully handling this tragic matter were Miranda L. Soucie and James Spiros, both of Champaign, Ill.
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Margaret Parr, 68, underwent a hiatal hernia repair done by Dr. Medhat Allam. She was discharged several hours after the surgery. That night and the next morning, she suffered severe pain and was brought to another hospital where she underwent a second surgery, which revealed necrosis of her gallbladder, intestines, pancreas and stomach.

Unfortunately, Parr later died of ischemia resulting from thrombosis that had compromised one or more of the stents that been implanted in her celiac and mesenteric artery the year before.

Parr was a retiree and survived by her wife and adult daughter.
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Toni Marie Overmyer, 44, underwent a robotic hysterectomy at Swedish Hospital. After she was extubated in the operating room, the attending CRNA (Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist) allegedly noticed that Overmyer was not breathing properly. She was placed back on a monitor, which showed that Overmyer had bradycardia, in other words, a slower than normal heartbeat. The CRNA then began bag mask ventilation and administered vasopressin and ephedrine, which was designed to increase Overmyer’s heart rate and blood pressure.

The efforts to restore heart rate and blood pressure failed.

An anesthesiologist arrived and noted that Overmyer was flaccid, had dilated pupils, and had a systolic blood pressure of 54 mm/Hg. The doctor called a code, and Overmyer was reintubated. Although her blood pressure and heart rate normalized quickly, she suffered anoxic brain injury and did not regain consciousness. Unfortunately, Overmyer died eight days later and was survived by her two adult children.
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Frances Mitchell, 43, underwent outpatient laparoscopic surgery performed by surgeon Dr. Andrew Green at the Northeast Georgia Medical Center. Approximately 12 hours after the surgery, she returned to the medical center complaining of severe abdominal pain. Dr. Green examined her, diagnosed bladder spasms and discharged her.

Mitchell died several days later. She was survived by her mother and two children.

Mitchell’s family and estate filed a lawsuit against Dr. Green, the medical center, a physician group, and the health system alleging that she had suffered a bowel perforation during the surgery but that Dr. Green had chosen not to recognize and repair it intraoperatively.
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Lenville Hall Sr. underwent a laparoscopic right hemicolectomy at Southside Regional Medical Center. For the next eight days, urine accumulated in Hall’s abdomen, which required surgery to repair a severed right ureter.

The surgery was unsuccessful. Hall experienced multiple complications, which included infections and loss of kidney function. He now requires lifetime dialysis.

He sued the surgeon who did the first surgery, alleging that he negligently cut Hall’s ureter and chose not to timely recognize this during the post-operative period.
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Doe, who was born with the congenital heart defect tetralogy of Fallot, underwent surgery to repair the defect when he was an infant. Various echocardiograms during his childhood revealed a small hole in his atrial septum.

Tetralogy of Fallot is a congenital heart condition that involves four abnormalities occurring together, including a defective septum between the ventricles and narrowing of the pulmonary artery; it is accompanied by cyanosis.

At age 10, Doe underwent surgery to repair his pulmonary valve. Dr. Roe placed Doe on cardiopulmonary bypass but did not cross-clamp the aorta, which allowed air to pass from the right side of Doe’s heart through the atrial septal defect to the left side of Doe’s heart.
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