- Ken Margolin | December 28, 2006 6:00 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeThe 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...
- Ken Margolin | December 27, 2006 11:15 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeSince 2000 the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has renewed efforts to prevent medication errors and other patient-related safety problems. The HHS formed the Patient Safety Task Force, which is a conglomeration of other agencies united to improve health-care safety, including the FDA and CDC. In 2002, the FDA devoted an entire division to assessing and correcting medication...
- Ken Margolin | December 26, 2006 7:15 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeA British study reported last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reported a significantly higher risk of hip fractures in patients over 50 years of age, taking popular heartburn drugs, such as Nexium, Prevacid, or Prilosec, for more than a year. The drugs, as any television watcher or magazine reader, knows, have been heavily advertised. The drugs that showed the highest...
- Ken Margolin | December 26, 2006 2:30 PM |
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Tractor-Trailer AccidentsA December 3rd article in The New York Times discusses the influence of the trucking industry and lobby in Washington, DC. Recent loosening of rules concerning the trucking industry has renewed debate about the soundness of the current administration's push to deregulate industry. Truck accidents involving passenger cars continue to be a major problem, causing injury and death on our roadways....
- Ken Margolin | December 21, 2006 7:00 AM |
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Automobile AccidentsI was recently retained by a young woman who was seriously injured in an automobile accident. She was hit while crossing the street, in a crosswalk, and suffered multiple fractures. While her injuries are not life-threatening, she will lose significant time from work, will require a lot of physical therapy, and carries the potential for long-term troublesome, and even deteriorating,...
- Ken Margolin | December 20, 2006 7:00 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeEarlier this year, GlaxoSmithKline, agreed to add a new warning to its anti-depressant drug, Paxil, and its controlled release version, Paxil Cr. The generic name for Paxil is paroxetine. The warnings will focus on young adults ages 18 - 30, and reads:"In some children and teens, antidepressants increase suicidal thoughts or actions. Young adults, especially those with depression, may be at...
- Ken Margolin | December 19, 2006 12:00 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeBiogen Idec, Inc., the manufacturer of the drug, Rituxan, just issued to an alert to doctors, warning that two patients taking Rituxan died of the fatal brain disease, "progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy" (PML). Both patients who died were being treated experimentally with the drug, for lupus. While Rituxan is approved by the Food and Drug Administration, only for treatment of rheumatoid...
- Ken Margolin | December 19, 2006 7:00 AM |
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Head & Brain InjuriesEvery year, the United States Department of Labor publishes a census of occupational injuries. The census gives some insight into the types of jobs in which workers are most at risk. It is a starting point for analysis of work injuries, why they happen, and how to prevent them. In 2005, there were 5,702 fatal job-related injuries reported in the United States. This translated to a rate of 4.1...
- Ken Margolin | December 18, 2006 7:00 AM |
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Medical MalpracticeThe pharmaceutical industry and medical profession have known for years that the misinterpretation of medical abbreviations can cause injury or death. Fixing the problem is much more difficult than identifying it. Medications are manufactured by any of numerous pharmaceutical companies, and are dispensed by tens or hundreds of thousands of health care professionals. Names of completely different...
- Ken Margolin | December 17, 2006 12:30 PM |
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Head & Brain InjuriesI grudgingly give credit where it is due. The insurance, big corporate cabal, has run one of the most brilliant public relations campaign in the history of duping the American public. Their first ploy was the one most essential in any media campaign - they captured the linguistic high ground. Everyone believes in reform in the abstract, and the forces who want to eliminate the rights of...
- Ken Margolin | December 15, 2006 2:30 PM |
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Head & Brain InjuriesFavorable results in Massachusetts cases of serious personal injury continue to make the news. Severable substantial settlements were reported this week in the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly newspaper. A car accident resulting in a closed head injury and multiple fractures to a young mother, resulted in a mediated $750,000 settlement. In another car crash case involving a closed head injury, this...
- Ken Margolin | December 15, 2006 7:00 AM |
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Head & Brain InjuriesIn a typical year, nearly 750 bicycle riders nationwide may die in car-bicycle crashes. Thousands more cyclists are injured, some with serious traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, or other life-threatening harm. Many drivers are hostile to cyclists, resentful if their ride is slowed down for a few moments by a bicycle in front of them, or if they have to move over a foot to give the...
- Ken Margolin | December 14, 2006 5:15 PM |
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MiscellaneousLast week, an 18 year old woman living in South Paris, Maine, was shot and killed by a hunter, while she was at the edge of the woods a short distance from her home. Every year during hunting season in hunting-intense states - especially deer hunting season - there are fatalities and many more non-fatal gunshot injuries. Residents and visitors of states in which hunting is a tradition, must be...
- Ken Margolin | December 08, 2006 5:00 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeEarlier this year, the federal Food and Drug Administration passed new rules designed to make it easier for doctors to get essential information from the inserts inside packages of prescription drugs. The rules change reflected an understanding that the growing complexity of information presented in package inserts, was becoming confusing even to physicians. Serious medication errors were a...
- Ken Margolin | December 08, 2006 1:00 PM |
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Medical MalpracticeThe ground breaking book, Medication Errors, edited by Michael R. Cohen, was published in 1999. In November of this year, Medication Errors 2nd Edition, was released. A review the book reveals the nature of some of the still-problematic areas of medication errors, as well as the ongoing efforts of the medical profession to reduce them.Pediatric medication errors continue to be a serious problem....
- Ken Margolin | December 06, 2006 7:00 AM |
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Automobile AccidentsAccording to the American Automobile Association ("AAA"), American motorists share a fear of being involved in accidents with large trucks. That communal fear is not unreasonable. Approximately 5000 people are killed annually in accidents involving passenger cars and commercial trucks. Fatal car-truck crashes are all too common. While many states have placed limits on the size of trucks' rigs,...
- Ken Margolin | December 05, 2006 7:00 AM |
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Head & Brain InjuriesMore than 700,000 people suffer strokes each year. Currently, there is only one drug on the market, TPA, approved in 1996 to treat and protect the brain from strokes. Subsequent efforts to introduce a better drug have failed--more than 100 times, in fact, since 1996. TPA's side-effects include brain hemorrhaging and it is only effective if administered within 3 hours of the onset of stroke....
- Ken Margolin | December 04, 2006 11:00 AM |
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Automobile AccidentsA recent article on traffic injuries, written by researchers at a non-profit organization affiliated with Emory University, states that worldwide, traffic accidents cause 1 million fatalities and over 20 million injuries per year. The authors (Lauren P. Giles, B.A.; Elisabeth S. Hayes, M.B.A.; and Mark L. Rosenberg, M.D., M.P.P., Road Traffic Injuries: Can we Stop a Global Epidemic?), draw the...