heart stint collapse

[artist36]

My father, age 77, recently had surgery in Dallas, TX to have two stints placed in an artery in his heart. 24 hrs later,he had to have surgery for a torn artery in his groin. Before being released, he noticed numbness and tingling in his right arm and the muscle in his hand had atropied. He has lost a good deal of strength in that hand now. An MRI showed no nerve damage or really anything significant. Then, a thallium stress test showed the stints have collapsed, so now he is facing an EECP treatment for 7 weeks. I believe a lot went wrong with this surgery,and he is being taken advantage of because of his age and because he's such a nice person (he loves his doctor and the hospital). Also, the insurance company may not want to pay for the $7,000 EECP treatment. I think he should see an attorney. He's not so sure.

 

[lawrat]

I am a law school graduate. What I offer is mere information, not to be construed as forming an attorney client relationship.

Well, basically the test is what I will tell you in a second. I think you need to speak with a medical malpractice attorney in your state about how strong your case really is:

There are two routes here:
1) Lack of informed consent OR
2) Negligence in the operating room


LACK OF INFORMED CONSENT....with your dad's age and his medical heart condition, if his doctor didn't inform him of the possibility of these stints collapsing, thereby not giving him a real oppportunity to decide whether to get this treatment done or inquire about realistic alternatives, then you may have a claim.


MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE:requires essentially three elements:

a. Your father was not negligent --> i.e. didn't do stuff pre op or post-op to create or aid in the collapsing of the stints.

b. The stints wouldn't have happened but for some sort of negligence. I.e. this type of injury or operation failure is not within the reasonable bounds of side effects as known to the medical community.

c. The doctor was the cause of this.