Recently in Medical Malpractice Category

Medical records may be the foundation of your injury claim or the linchpin of your defense. But getting medical records for your lawsuit can be difficult.

The following steps will help you obtain those sensitive medical documents in order to win your case and get some peace of mind.

A San Diego man died while getting his wisdom teeth removed. His family alleges medical malpractice.

Getting your wisdom teeth removed may be one of the most common types of surgery. After all, almost everyone will have their wisdom teeth removed at some point.

However, tragedy hit 25-year-old Marek Lapinski. As he was undergoing the routine procedure in March, he reportedly began to cough. Medical personnel gave him the drug propofol, and Lapinski then went into cardiac arrest, reports the Los Angeles Times.

An oral surgeon in Oklahoma is accused of using unsanitary practices and possibly exposing his patients to hepatitis and HIV. Now many are wondering if the dentist can be sued if a patient contracted HIV or some other disease due to the doctor's alleged carelessness.

The Oklahoma State Department of Health is offering free screenings for the 7,000 patients who saw Dr. W. Scott Harrington over the past six years, reports The Oklahoman.

Hundreds of people were tested over the weekend after officials announced that poor hygiene practices at Harrington's two clinics in Tulsa and Owasso created a public health hazard. Former patients are being checked for hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV.

When does doctor-patient confidentiality end and public protection begin? Or more specifically, do psychiatrists and therapists have a duty to disclose patient information if a patient poses a threat?

Let's talk a bit about what "privileged communications" are. They're discussions between two individuals that are supposed to be kept confidential. State laws generally recognize a doctor-patient privilege, and some extend it to psychotherapists as well.

There are limits to this privilege, however. One of these limits is when the patient says things that could pose a physical threat to another.

The first Johnson & Johnson DePuy hip implant lawsuit to go to trial has resulted in an $8.3 million jury award for one man's injuries.

This could be the first of many large jury awards, as more than 10,000 similar lawsuits have been filed nationwide, Bloomberg reports. Analysts say that means J&J may end up having to shell out billions of dollars.

The lawsuits allege that J&J's DePuy unit defectively designed its ASR metal hip implants, which caused painful injuries to thousands of recipients. The $8.3 million award will go to one of those hip implant recipients, Loren "Bill" Kransky.

A Mississippi man has brought a lawsuit against hospital after he allegedly woke up during cataract surgery.

Hector Alonso filed his medical malpractice lawsuit against Tulane University Medical Center. He says that he underwent cataract surgery on his right eye, but woke up in the middle of the procedure, reports CBS Houston.

He asked the doctors to stop the procedure as he alerted them of his conscious state. However, instead of accommodating the patient and halting the procedure, Alonso accuses the hospital of essentially torturing him and costing him vision in that eye.

Horror stories about scalpels and sponges sewed up inside patients after surgery aren't just myths. It turns out preventable mistakes like that do happen, more often than you may realize.

Surgeons are human after all, and things can go wrong during surgical procedures. But some mistakes are so big that they're known as "never events" in the medical community. Those are things that never happen for a legitimate reason.

Perhaps "never events" is a misnomer. A study by Johns Hopkins University indicates that many types of surgical mistakes happen, at a rate of about 10 per week.

You go through surgery to feel better or to address a pressing medical problem. But sometimes after surgery, you end up in a worse condition.

A lot can go wrong in the operating room, and you may need to consider bringing a lawsuit to get compensation. Considering that you're typically unconscious when the surgery is performed, you may not realize what went wrong until after you've recovered.

So what types of mistakes can happen during surgery? Here are five of the most common surgical mistakes that can lead to malpractice lawsuits:

When you take your infant to the hospital, the goal is to make her healthy, not to walk out with a new injury.

Lylah Rose got the flu when she was 2 months old, so her parents took her to the local hospital in Merced, Calif., to check it out. As part of her treatment, a nurse tried to give the baby an IV so she could start getting more fluids. But the nurse had trouble finding a vein.

The nurse picked up a light to help her find a place to start an IV, but after putting it in Lylah's hand for a few minutes, the baby started screaming.

The meningitis outbreak that stemmed from contaminated pain medication has over a hundred victims so far but only one has filed a lawsuit.

Barbe Puro received a steroid injection for chronic back pain in September and shortly after the injection she suffered headaches and nausea. But she was later informed that the shots she received may have been contaminated. To test for meningitis Puro had to undergo a painful spinal tap, reports Bloomberg Businessweek.

Her lawsuit seeks to hold the company responsible for the injuries she suffered and for the injuries suffered by everyone who received the tainted drugs.