If a medical error has resulted in the amputation of an arm, hand, finger, leg, foot or toe, you may have grounds for an amputation malpractice lawsuit. Our lawyers have recovered millions for amputation victims. For a free case review, please contact Pritzker Olsen Attorneys.

How Much is My Amputation Malpractice Case Worth?

Amputation compensation can include amounts for past and future medical expenses, pain and suffering and lost suffering. Amputation pain and suffering can include physical pain, emotional distress, disability, disfigurement and loss of quality of life.

The amount of compensation in an amputation malpractice case depends on the facts of the case, including the age, occupation and lifestyle of the amputation victim. An amputation lawyer at Pritzker Olsen can discuss an amputation lawsuit with you in more detail.

Who Can I Sue?

If your amputation was caused by the negligence of a doctor, nurse, pharmacist or other medical professional, you may be able to sue several parties. In many cases that we handle, we pursue claims against a hospital and a doctor.

When is an Amputation Caused by Malpractice?

There are many possible scenarios. Yours may be one we have not handled yet, but below are some examples:

• A leg has to be amputated because a surgical sponge was left in a leg.
• Post-operative blood clots are not treated, and both legs have to be amputated below the knee.
• The wrong arm is surgically removed (arm amputation lawsuit).
• A misdiagnosed knee infection spreads and becomes life-threatening, requiring the leg to be amputated above the knee.
• A wrongly-administered medication (usually the wrong dose or the wrong method of administration) causes serious injury, resulting in an amputation.

FREE CONSULTATION WITH AN AMPUTATION LAWYER >>

Labels: amputation, malpractice attorney, malpractice lawsuit

A nurse at a Florida hospital gave a pregnant woman on bed rest the wrong medication. Instead of giving her medication to prevent delivery of the baby, they gave her Prostin E2, a medication used to expel uterine contents after a miscarriage and to induce labor.

The woman gave birth at less than 6 months gestation to a little girl who suffered severe brain damage.

The parents now have medical bills over 3.5 million dollars.

This family should be compensated, and a lawsuit has been filed against the hospital and others.

“I am a medical malpractice lawyer, but I am also a safety advocate. This case highlights the need for hospitals to take more measures to ensure that medication errors do not happen, not ever,” stated Attorney Fred Pritzker. “Every medication error case we have handled could have been easily prevented.”

“As the country is debating the need for health care reform, we need to insist on hospitals using technology from the time a prescription is written until it is administered to a patient to prevent misunderstanding. Also, nurses, pharmacists, and other medical professionals administering medications need to be adequately trained to check and double check to make sure the correct dose of the correct medication is being admininistered,” continued Pritzker.

Attorney Fred Pritzker has recovered millions for medical malpractice victims. He has appeared on the CBS News and on Fox’s “Geraldo Live.” He has also been interviewed by The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Lawyers USA and others.
Mr. Pritzker is listed in the current edition of The Best Lawyers in America. To contact Attorney Fred Pritzker, please call 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or submit our online form for a free consultation.

Posted September 2009.

Labels: medication error lawyer, wrong medication

If you have lost a loved one to medical malpractice, you are not alone. 200,000 people in the United States will die this year from preventable medical errors and hospital infections, according to a report by the Hearst Corporation entitled, "Dead by Mistake."

Our lawyers represent families in medical malpractice wrongful death lawsuits. Our experience has been that the following scenarios are far more common than they should be:

• Surgery in the wrong part of the body. For example, removing the wrong kidney, removing fat instead of a cancerous tumor, removing the wrong section of the colon for a patient with severe diverticulosis and replacing the wrong heart valve are all considered surgeon malpractice.
• Medication error. Medication error is a huge problem on every level. Doctors make mistakes with prescriptions. Pharmacies give patients the wrong dose or wrong medication. Nurses in hospitals give patients the wrong dose or wrong medication.
• Hospital infections. Many lawyers won't touch hospital infection cases because they can be hard to prove, but we have recovered compensation for patients who contracted infections after surgery.

To contact a lawyer at Pritzker Olsen about a medical malpractice wrongful death, please call 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or submit our free consultation form. We are not paid unless you are.

Labels: medical malpractice lawyer, medication error, surgery malpractice

At least 11 cases of hepatitis C have been linked to a former employee of HealthOne Rose Medical Center in Denver, Colorado. The employee, Kristen Diane Parker, allegedly injected herself with painkillers, including fentanyl, meant for patients, then filled the used syringes with saline solution. She allegedly knew at the time that she was infected.


Hepatitis C is a contagious liver disease that can cause serious illness. It can take many years, but over time, a person with hepatitis C can develop the following:

* liver cancer
* liver failure or
* cirrhosis (irreversible and potentially fatal scarring of the liver).

A hepatitis C diagnosis drastically changes the quality of a person's life and is a death sentence for many. Compensation for hepatitis C victims should include amounts for future medical bills, pain and suffering, disability and loss of quality of life. Contact our lawyers about compensation for hepatitis C victims.

Ms. Parker worked at Rose Medical Center from October 2008 to April of 2009. She then worked at Audubon Surgery Center from May 2009 until her arrest by federal agents in June of 2009. No cases of hepatitis C have been linked to Audubon Surgery Center to date.

Rose Medical has notified 4,700 patients that they may have been infected with hepatitis C. Audubon Surgery Center notified 900.

If you have been diagnosed with hepatitis C, you should not sign anything before contacting an attorney. Our law firm has hepatitis litigation experience. To contact us, please call 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or submit our free consultation form.

Labels: hepatitis, medical malpractice lawyer

PritzkerOlsen, P.A. is actively investigating possible claims of medical malpractice in the surgical removal of leads for implantable cardiac devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators.

It is a frequent occurrence for heart leads to eventually wear out or fail. Therefore, a physician must decide whether to remove the old lead before placing a new lead or simply leave the old lead in place. Removal of an old lead is a very difficult and challenging procedure because the lead may have become overgrown with fibrous tissue and therefore stuck inside a major blood vessel. Extracting the lead can be dangerous but leaving it in place can make it more difficult to remove later because of the growth of fibrous tissue.

Removing a lead is typically challenging because of the growth of this fibrous tissue. Therefore, it is important that a physician be well trained. The Heart Rhythm Society, a group representing doctors who implant heart devices, plans to issue guidelines about lead extractions later this year. The Society is expected to urge doctors to perform at least 30 removals under the supervision of an experienced extraction surgeon before operating solo. This is because there is a very long and difficult “learning curve” for the removal of these devices which is often done with laser. This is known as “laser lead extraction.”

Common manufacturers are Medtronic, St. Jude, and Boston Scientific. One of the most common leads is the Sprint Fidelis lead manufactured by Medtronic.

If you or a loved one have been the victim of complications during a cardiac lead extraction, please contact Elliot Olsen or Fred Pritzker for a free consultation: 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or submit our free consultation form.

CONTACT OUR LAW FIRM ABOUT PATIENT COMPENSATION FOR
CARDIAC LEAD EXTRACTION MALPRACTICE >

News Articles:

• Barry Meier, Removing Medtronic Heart Cables is Hard Choice, New York Times, April 6, 2009.
• Barry Meier, Medtronic Links Device for Heart to 13 Deaths, New York Times, March 13, 2009.
• Barry Meier, Medtronic Dispute Shows Need for Device Registry, New York Times, February 26, 2009.
• Barry Meier, Study Finds More Failure of Heart Device, New York Times, February 23, 2009.
• Barry Meier, Lawmakers Seek Right to Return Right to Sue Device Makers, New York Times, February 20, 2009.

Labels: heart surgery malpractice, malpractice attorney

A baby at Boston Medical Center was administered the wrong dose of morphine and became ill, according to the Boston Herald. According to the story, the father of the baby was told that a nurse had accidentally “overdosed” the baby with morphine. Boston Medical Center issued a statement acknowledging a medication error involving an infant March 14.

When a nurse administers the wrong dose of a medication, it is negligence—nurse malpractice.

In nurse malpractice cases, the hospital is generally sued because it is legally responsible for work-related negligent behavior of hospital nurses. This is important, because the hospital has the resources and insurance coverage necessary to adequately compensate the injured patient.

If you or a loved one has been the victim of nurse malpractice, contact our law firm and tell us your story. If you decide to hire us, we will thoroughly investigate your case, hire necessary medical experts and take all measures necessary to help you obtain the compensation you deserve.

To contact a lawyer at PritzkerOlsen, please call 1-888-377-8900 (toll free) or submit our free consultation form.

Keywords: Nurse malpractice, lawyer for morphine overdose, hospital malpractice, wrong dose of morphine.

Reference: Jessica Fargen, Baby medical mixup: Newborn OK after morphine gaffe at Boston Medical Center, Boston Herald, March 20, 2009.

Labels: medical malpractice lawyer, nurse malpractice, wrong dose

A recent study published in Pediatrics reviewed 960 randomly selected charts from 12 children's hospitals. The study found 107 unique adverse drug events, which, broken down, included 11.1 adverse drug events per 100 patients, 15.7 per 1000 patient-days, and 1.23 per 1000 medication doses.

According to the study, “Twenty-two percent of all adverse drug events were deemed preventable, 17.8% could have been identified earlier, and 16.8% could have been mitigated more effectively. The most common medication classes causing adverse drug events were opioids/ analgesics (51%) and antibiotics, and the most common stages of the medication management process associated with preventable adverse drug events were monitoring and prescribing/ordering.” The highest rate of adverse drug events per patient occurred in the hematology/oncology units.

Opioid analgesics include morphine, codeine, fentanyl and other pain medications. The risk is pain medication overdose. There are several reasons for this including:

1. The increased difficulty of calculating dosages of pain medication for children
2. Failure to adequately monitor the patient
3. The dangerous nature of these medications
   

These are extremely dangerous drugs and a small error in administration of these drugs can result in serious injury or death. There are also situations where the pain medication has adulterations or other defects that cause injury. For example, in the last few months, FDA has announced a number of recalls and health alerts involving fentanyl.

If your child experienced serious injury or death after being administered a pain medication or any medication in a hospital, you should contact a medical malpractice lawyer immediately. To contact attorney Fred Pritzker, managing attorney for our medical malpractice cases, for information on medication overdose lawsuits, please call 1-888-377-8900 (toll-free) or submit our free case consultation form.

Article: "Development, Testing, and Findings of a Pediatric-Focused Trigger Tool to Identify Medication-Related Harm in US Children's Hospitals,"Glenn S. Takata, MDa,b, Wilbert Mason, MD, MPHc, Carol Taketomo, PharmDe, Tina Logsdon, MSf and Paul J. Sharek, MD, MPHg, PEDIATRICS, Vol. 121 No. 4, April 2008, pp. e927-e935.

Labels: medication error, pain medication overdose