Negligently Performed Spinal Surgery Yields $5.25 Million Settlement
Recent news indicates that a $5.25 million medical malpractice settlement has been reached in a medical malpractice lawsuit between a woman and the doctor and hospital that negligently performed her spinal surgery. As a result of significant complications from the surgery, the woman’s left leg needed to be amputated.
Generally, we go to the hospital or seek a doctor’s advice to receive treatment or to heal a condition to improve our medical health. Although not every negative outcome is medical malpractice, when doctors or other health care providers fail to follow to proper procedures and an individual is harmed as a result, medical negligence or malpractice may have occurred.
Here, a woman went into the hospital to have spinal surgery – an “anterior transabdominal approach to the lumbosacral spine.” However, documents allege that post-surgery the hospital staff that cared for the patient failed to properly monitor and treat the woman, resulting in the loss of her leg. Medical malpractice not only refers to the actions of the treating physician – it may encompass the actions of everyone involved in providing care. The assistance you receive from each health care provider during your hospital stay including staff, nurses and physician, is held to a specific standard of care. A failure to meet that standard may constitute negligence.
According to the lawsuit filed back in September 2007, during the woman’s post-operative recovery in intensive care, she suffered intra-abdominal hemorrhaging, post-operative bleeding, abdominal wounds and other complications that the medical staff failed to diagnose or treat, resulting in a gangrenous lower leg condition requiring an above-knee amputation. The lawsuit further alleged that the nursing staff failed to properly supervise or monitor the woman’s care, so that her physicians were not promptly notified of her worsening condition.
If you believe you may have been the victim of medical malpractice, please contact the dedicated San Francisco medical malpractice lawyers at Bostwick & Peterson, LLP for a confidential consultation.
