A fifty-year-old man saw his family doctor complaining of a pain in his side. A native of Vietnam he had lived in the United States since 1975. From the time he moved here and sought medical attention it was noted that he had minimally abnormal liver function tests indicating chronic liver injury. In the 1980’s [...]
Medical Errors & Lessons from the Courtroom: A Painful Legacy Turned into Litigation
January 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment
A fifty-four year old woman was being followed by her gynecologist for routine visits. She had previously been treated for bilateral breast cancers successfully and had a strong family history of breast and ovarian cancer. She was seen from time to time by one of her doctor’s partners if he happened to be out of [...]
Medical Errors & Lessons from the Courtroom: Catastrophic Clotting After an Orthopedic Mishap, A Cascade of Bad Events
December 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment
A previously healthy twenty-four year-old medical student saw her university-based orthopedic surgeon for a tear in a ligament in her knee. In college she had been an all-American soccer player and had considered a career in professional soccer but had decided instead to go to medical school. She had injured her knee in a pick-up [...]
Medical Errors & Lessons from the Courtroom: Gardner’s Syndrome and the Case of the Remaining Rectum
December 19, 2011 by Leave a Comment
A fifty-three year-old man entered the office of his family physician complaining of rectal bleeding. He was born with Gardner’s Syndrome (GS). This condition is inherited as an autosomal dominant (if either parent has it you have a 50% chance of getting it) and is life-altering. By age twenty you will have developed hundreds to [...]
Medical Errors & Lessons from the Courtroom: Why People Sue Their Doctors
December 12, 2011 by 2 Comments
In my career as a practicing Oncologist and medical-legal expert in malpractice litigation, on behalf of injured parties and defendants, I thought I understood why people sued their doctor. I assumed they did so out of anger over a bad outcome. Occasionally I would see a new patient in consultation whose cancer diagnosis had been [...]
Medical Errors & Lessons from the Courtroom: Muscle Spasm or Neck Mass?
December 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment
A thirty-five year-old woman sought help from several physicians for pain in the right side of her neck. It had started insidiously as a mild discomfort but over a nine-month period had increased to the point where she was taking strong pain medicine several times a day. Her primary care physician (PCP) had ordered neck [...]
Medical Errors & Lessons from the Courtroom: A Clotting Catastrophe
November 28, 2011 by 2 Comments
A fifty year-old man entered the Emergency Department with severe abdominal pain. Three years earlier he had undergone liver transplantation from a donor on life support who had collapsed suddenly with subsequent brain death. A year after his transplant he had a blood clot on his lung after knee surgery. He was on blood thinners [...]
Medical Malpractice: Brain Masses vs. Brain Cancer
November 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment
A healthy forty-five year-old man awoke to find he had trouble speaking. At the emergency department he underwent an urgent CT scan of his brain showing multiple masses in his brain the largest of which was about an inch in diameter. A chest x-ray showed a spot in his lung, compatible with either infection or [...]
Cancer Care and Malpractice Litigation: Should I Sue?
November 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Although the diagnosis of cancer strikes fear in the hearts of the newly affected, most people, bombarded by the media with news of advances in treatment, believe that with the proper care they can be cured. So what happens if things don’t go well and the person dies? At some point a family member may [...]
New Advances in Lung Cancer Screening
July 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment
The latest word on lung cancer screening was just published in a recent New England Journal of Medicine. In this trial, participants at high risk of getting lung cancer were given either annual chest x-rays or spiral CT scans for three years. There was an annual analysis of new lung cancer cases and deaths in [...]