Medical Malpractice

• Drug Errors Scourge Continues

  Ken Margolin | January 02, 2007 1:00 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Today's New York Times has a chilling article by Jane E. Brody, detailing a pharmacy error that ended the independence of a previously healthy elderly woman. The pharmacy gave her methotrexate, a chemotherapy drug that suppresses the immune system, instead of her glaucoma drug, methazolamide. The woman took the wrong pills for a month, with a catastrophic result. She ended up in a coma and...

• 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...

• FDA Medication Error Reduction Efforts

  Ken Margolin | December 27, 2006 11:15 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Since 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...

• New Pharmaceutical Worries

  Ken Margolin | December 26, 2006 7:15 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  A 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...

• Paxil Suicide Risk

  Ken Margolin | December 20, 2006 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Earlier 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...

• Rituxan Deaths

  Ken Margolin | December 19, 2006 12:00 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Biogen 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...

• Medication Errors Due to Dangerous Abbreviations

  Ken Margolin | December 18, 2006 7:00 AM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  The 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...

• New FDA Drug Information Rules

  Ken Margolin | December 08, 2006 5:00 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Earlier 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...

• Medication Error Reduction Efforts Continue

  Ken Margolin | December 08, 2006 1:00 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  The 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....

• Pharmacy Errors and Tips on Avoiding Them

  Ken Margolin | November 21, 2006 3:00 PM | 0 CommentsBoston, MA

  Pharmacy errors cause over 7,000 deaths per year, and around 5% of the more than 3 billion prescriptions filled are incorrect, according to the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP). The NABP has even created a special task force to combat medication errors in pharmacies as the number of prescriptions increases and the potential for error rises as well. Pharmacy medication errors...