Mass. Jury Awards $14.5M in Surgery Malpractice Case

March 5, 2008

  • March 5, 2008 at 7:20 am
    Dreadful says:
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    How can you read the Insurance Journal skimpy article and an excerpt posted from another article and decide that you know there wasn’t malpractice and the verdict was ridiculous? Try filtering out your emotions before you post idiotic nonsense.

  • March 5, 2008 at 7:36 am
    Ya mean like.... says:
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    Ya mean like Dreadful’s comments? Where are your filtered, reasoned, factual notes?

  • March 5, 2008 at 2:12 am
    Bio Student says:
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    I always thought the tyroid was located near the base of the neck. Air trapped in the abdomin? Having actually had mulitple abdominal surgery, any air in the abdomin is absobed by the body. The so called trapped air by itself is not cause for bleeding leading to death.

    Sound like some facats were omited from this article or the jury slept through any medical testimony.

  • March 5, 2008 at 2:59 am
    Pricingbabe says:
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    According to the Lowell Sun:

    “After the surgery, Shannyn MacPherson developed “abdominal compartment syndrome,” or trapped air in her stomach. She was taken back into surgery and opened up, but the reason for the trapped air couldn’t be found, so she was sewn up before all the air was released, Higgins said. Within 90 minutes, her abdomen was swollen again and the pressure from the trapped air caused her internal organs to bleed. “

  • March 5, 2008 at 4:15 am
    Dread says:
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    Where’s the negligence/malpractice? Some people have complications totally unrelated to the quality of the procedure. There are variable beyond the control of medical professionals. The only thing patients can hope for is that those professionals do everything within their power to keep them alive. Sometimes, it doesn’t and nobody can be faulted. Enriching the survivors accomplishes nothing but setting bad precedent. These ridiculous awards should be reserved for true, malpractice cases.

  • March 5, 2008 at 4:25 am
    Calif Ex Pat says:
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    This sounds like an anesthesia accident – or ‘tubing the goose’ as it’s called where the doc misses the trachea and puts the breather into the esophogus – thereby inflating the gastric pouch (stomach) and causing associated hypoxia. Also sounds like they were in such a hurry to repair what I assume was a gastric rupture that they missed some bleeders onthe way out and she died of internal exsanguination

  • March 5, 2008 at 4:28 am
    Nobody Important says:
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    Exsanguination! Don’t use such big words. Us ‘C’ students can’t understand youse.

  • March 5, 2008 at 4:46 am
    lastbat says:
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    HAHA! Great callback!

  • March 6, 2008 at 8:55 am
    Allan says:
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    We can’t make any progress as a society as long as the courts are a lottery for attorneys. When a death occurs, AND IT’S PROVEN THERE WAS IN FACT REAL MALPRACTICE (which is rare), people file lawsuits, ostensibly to recover pecuniary damages to “punish” the wrongdoer, and I almost forgot…….hit the lottery. You can’t argue with the pecuniary element. That’s only fair. But why should survivors be unjustly enriched over a tragedy. Forget “punishing” anybody, that’s why there’s insurance. If the goal is to improve the system, then any award should go to some type of fund that can impact CHANGE. We keep doing the same thing we’ve always done and keep expecting a different outcome. It’s insanity, but it’s big business.

  • March 6, 2008 at 12:16 pm
    Family Member says:
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    How can anyone know what it feels like to actually lose a family member, and the resulting horror of having watched a loved one lose their life? Until you walk in those shoes, please don’t pass judgement. When a doctor who has never performed a procedure does just this, and it ends poorly for the patient, what other process is there to make the doctor accountable? This doctor clearly should not have performed the surgery, and his assistant should not have assisted, as she did not know proper procedure for abdominal compartment syndrome. Why didn’t they call in the experts when they had difficulty with the patient????



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