Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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James DeGeorge, 84, was hospitalized for the placement of a pacemaker. He was labeled a high fall risk due to his unsteady gait and forgetfulness. A nurse gave him Ambien one evening as he reported he could not sleep. He was placed in a chair without an alarm.

An hour later, he was trying to get out of the chair but fell and hit his head. He suffered a subdural hematoma as a result of that blunt force. He died three weeks later and was survived by his wife and three adult children.

DeGeorge’s family and estate filed a lawsuit against the hospital for his wrongful death. The DeGeorge family asserted that the hospital chose not to take the necessary fall precautions and properly monitor his movements.
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William Mann had a history of smoking. He underwent a routine physical including a chest x-ray, which was interpreted as normal. However, three years later, he was diagnosed as having metastatic lung cancer.

In spite of chemotherapy, radiation and other cancer treatments, including a procedure to reinforce the bones in his back, he died 20 months after the diagnosis. He was 58 years old and was survived by his wife and four adult children at the time of his death.

The Mann family sued the United States alleging that the Veterans Administration (VA) radiologist chose not to identify a suspicious 1.5-centimeter density on the left lung visible on the chest x-ray done three years before Mann’s fatal diagnosis.
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Robert Suryadeth, 64, suffered from valvular heart disease. Before he underwent an outpatient surgery for his back issues, he met with Dr. Aruna Paspula, an internist, who had never seen him before that day.

Dr. Paspula performed an electrocardiogram, listened to his heart, and cleared him for the back surgery.

After the surgery, Suryadeth was discharged to home where he died later that day. An autopsy revealed three blocked coronary arteries and identified the cause of death as cardiac arrest. He was survived by his wife and three children.
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David Robinson, who was in his 30s, found blood in his stool. He went to the office of his primary care physician, Dr. William Elder, where he was seen by a physician assistant, David Lamport. Lamport did a cursory physical examination and diagnosed internal hemorrhoids as the origin of blood in Robinson’s stool.

Unfortunately, eight months later, when Robinson’s symptom of blood in his stool persisted, he underwent a colonoscopy, which showed Stage IV colon cancer; it had spread to his liver.

In spite of cancer treatment, Robinson died within a year. He had been working in his family business earning approximately $90,000 per year. He was survived by his wife and three young daughters.
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Andrew Swanson had a history of various medical problems including diabetes, end-stage renal disease and gangrene. After undergoing a skin graft on his right foot, he was transferred to Regional Hospital for Respiratory and Complex Care.
He was in his mid-40’s and was treated with foot dressing to be changed daily and wrapped with non-elastic Kerlix dressing.

In spite of this procedure ordered by his treating physicians, a Regional Hospital nurse applied an elastic Ace bandage and left it in place for three days.
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Michael Fava, 58, went to the emergency department complaining of leg pain that had not improved since he was seen at another hospital the previous day. He was diagnosed with having a retroperitoneal hemorrhage and a lack of blood flow to the legs.

However, the treating vascular surgeons, Dr. Harold Chung-Loy and Dr. Vincent Moss, chose not to determine the cause of the bleeding.

Fava spent four days in the hospital, which ended when he had bilateral above-the-knee leg amputations as a result of the lack of blood flow to his legs.
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Ms. Doe, 52, underwent popliteal peroneal artery bypass grafting surgery. She required four additional surgeries after this procedure, including replacement of her inflow and outflow grafts, a fasciotomy to relieve compartment syndrome and resection of necrotic muscle in her lower extremity.

Almost five weeks after the first surgery, Doe suffered a stroke. This led to her death the following day. Doe had been a human resource director earning approximately $100,000 per year. She was survived by her two adult children.

The lawsuit claimed that the outflow target vessel for the first surgery was negligently selected. This led to extremity ischemia, the need for additional surgery, the development of compartment syndrome and failure of the graft.
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Sarita Kellman, 70, underwent treatment for a fractured left ankle. After the ankle was repaired at Bellevue Hospital Center, a nurse offered her the use of crutches. However, she requested an escort, telling the nurse that she was feeling lightheaded and that she could not use the crutches safely. The nurse refused Kellman’s request for an escort as she was being discharged from the hospital.

Kellman took a taxi home. While getting out of the cab, she fell, fracturing her right wrist and left ankle. This was the same ankle that had been fractured earlier. Kellman was taken back to the hospital where she underwent wrist surgery followed by a second ankle surgery and rehabilitation.

Kellman now suffers pain in her right wrist and restricted range of motion. She sued the hospital’s operator, alleging that the nurse was negligent in choosing not to provide her with an escort along with crutches.
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William Glynn Jr., 66, suffered an injury to his cervical spine in a car accident. He had limited use of his extremities following that incident. He underwent cervical spinal surgery at North Fulton Hospital and was gaining strength and showing signs of improvement.

However, three days after that surgery, hospital nurses tried to move Glynn from a reclining chair to his bed. They placed Glynn in a sling attached to a Hoyer lift, but his legs slid downward toward the floor. The hospital nurses pushed the Hoyer lift back toward the chair, which caused Glynn to strike his head against that chair.

The next day, Glynn awoke with new symptoms; a CT scan revealed a fractured-dislocation at C7 to T1. In spite of surgery about 40 hours after this incident, Glynn now suffers from incomplete quadriplegia and requires 24-hour-per-day care.
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Thomas Rogers was 54 years old when he underwent surgery at Optim Medical Center-Tattnall to remove a cervical disk at C-3. Later that night following the surgery, he complained of neck pain and difficulty speaking and swallowing.

Four hours later, a code blue was started. Despite four attempts to intubate, he died. He was survived by his wife.

Rogers’s wife, individually and on behalf of the Rogers’ estate, sued the hospital and Rogers’s attending physician claiming that the doctor and the hospital’s nurses chose not to respond to his postoperative complaints. It was also claimed that there was a failure to control Rogers’s bleeding at the surgical site.
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