Patients being treated for ailments often suffer severe injury or even death from the treatment. This occurred to a man seeking treatment for an arm injury. It is reported that a botched bone marrow biopsy ultimately resulting in an abdominal hemorrhage that led to the man's death on August 11, 2011.
The son of this deceased man has now filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against the treating hospital. Among other things, the complaint in the lawsuit alleges that the patient "suffered hypovolemic shock, conscious pain and suffering, mental anguish, injury, shock to his system and wrongful death."
It was reported that the patient had the right ilium, a bone within the pelvic region broken during the bone marrow biopsy. In the process, the patient's iliac artery was also injured during the biopsy - such injury being left undiagnosed. The patient was then discharged from the hospital, then fainted in the hospital parking lot, was readmitted to the emergency room and later died from the internal bleeding.
It would be very difficult in such a circumstance to establish whether a medical mistake did occur without the assistance of legal help. Attorneys with an extensive practice in the medical malpractice area can investigate such claims, consult with medical experts and determine if malpractice did occur.
It's not difficult to foresee that such a happening could have occurred in any number of medical facilities - including Chicago. Whether medical malpractice did or did not occur will need to be determined by the court hearing the medical malpractice lawsuit. However, medical professionals do need to be held to a particular standard of care where such errors are not allowed to occur.
Source: Watertown Daily Times, "Massena man files medical malpractice lawsuit over father's 2011 death," by Darren Ankrom, August 17, 2012
