All Topics

• Dropped Clues Lead to Medical Malpractice and Patient Death

  Ken Margolin | May 23, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  A doctor can no more afford to ignore clues provided by his patient, than a homicide detective can fail to dust the crime scene for fingerprints. The best internists would undoubtedly make great detectives. When the body provides clues that something is not working properly, the doctor must follow the clues until he diagnoses the cause of the troubling symptom. In fairness to physicians, the...

• Disastrous Distractions

  Ken Margolin | May 07, 2007 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Driving while chowing down a donut, alternating the snack with a cup of hot coffee, is a time-honored example of dangerous, distracted driving. Even though driving safety researchers preached that drinking a beverage while driving, could lead to car crashes due to distraction, human nature dictated that eating and drinking while driving, was never going to stop. The ante was raised with the...

• Epidemic of Nursing Home Abuse Continues

  Ken Margolin | April 27, 2007 9:30 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Newspapers are printing an advance overview of a GAO (Government Accountability Office) report, due out next week. The GAO investigated nursing homes receiving Medicaid/Medicare payments, to see if incidences of nursing home abuse had lessened since a 1998 GAO report, targeting such disgraces. The new report is not encouraging. Even homes in which instances of shocking abuse occur, receive...

• Dangers from Above

  Ken Margolin | March 21, 2007 4:10 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  I'm not a deer hunter, but I have a few friends who are. They tell me that the reason why hunting deer from a tree stand is so successful, is that deers have no natural enemies who prey on them from trees. Deers don't look up to spot potential dangers. Humans are similarly at risk from objects falling from above them. Some truly catastrophic brain injuries, crushing injuries, and deaths, have...

• Private Investigators for Real Plaintiffs

  Ken Margolin | February 27, 2007 9:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  You've seen them on television - those private investigators who can solve any crime or get the true story on any disaster while the authorities fiddle around without a clue. If you are old enough to remember "The Rockford Files," then you know how creative television private eyes can be. The work of real-life private investigators is more boring, generally consisting of tenacity, a good...

• Missed Heart Attack Diagnosis

  Ken Margolin | February 23, 2007 5:05 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  For years, we have been hearing of the importance of a prompt trip to the emergency room or a call to "911" if one is suffering from symptoms of potential heart attack. The expectation is that once in the care of physicians, the various tests available to detect heart attacks will be correctly employed and proper treatment administered. It turns out that getting to the emergency room on time may...

• Peanut Butter Salmonella Outbreak

  Ken Margolin | February 21, 2007 12:30 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Massachusetts has not escaped the salmonella outbreak attributed to jars of Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter, that has sickened hundreds of consumers. According to federal officials, lids of peanut jars produced by ConAgra Foods with a product code beginning "2111" may contain the contaminated peanut butter. While a majority of the people known to date to have gotten ill from the peanut...

• Failure to Diagnose on Time

  Ken Margolin | February 12, 2007 2:50 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Doctors who are named defendants in medical malpractice cases based on failure to make timely diagnoses, often complain that the plaintiff's lawyer had the benefit of hindsight that they lacked. A review of cases of late diagnosis, however, shows that the real culprit was often a lack of curiosity by the physician. The best doctors are medical detectives and like the best detectives, they will...

• Large Truck Crashes

  Ken Margolin | January 25, 2007 3:00 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Last year, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration ("FMCSA") reported to Congress, the results of a 3-year study into the causes of large truck crashes. Large trucks were defined for the study, as any truck weighing 5 tons or more. The study was the most comprehensive yet conducted, involving a thorough review of nearly 1,000 crashes in 17 states. The purpose of the study was to gain an...

• Risks of Office-Based Anesthesia

  Ken Margolin | December 28, 2006 6:00 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  The recent case of a young person dying during a wisdom-tooth removal has raised questions over the safe use of anesthesia in office-based surgical procedures. Anesthesia complications or deaths are not limited to office surgery, (such as oral surgery, plastic surgery, etc.), yet in hospital or ambulatory situations there are perhaps more precautions taken, better monitoring and certainly more...