Having a colonoscopy can be unpleasant, but it may also be dangerous. Before such a procedure, doctors often ask patients to take oral sodium phosphate (OSP) to clean out the bowels. However, OSP (which is available over the counter) can be very dangerous.

According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), OSP has been linked to acute phosphate nephropathy (also known as nephrocalcinosis), a serious condition affecting the kidneys. In patients suffering from acute phosphate nephropathy, calcium‑phosphate crystals are deposited in the renal tubes. The effect of this condition can be very serious: Patients may need dialysis, they may need a kidney transplant, or they may die from renal failure.

The problem often is not promptly diagnosed, because the symptoms of acute phosphate nephropathy can vary widely from victim to victim and include such common symptoms as nausea, headaches, drowsiness, pain, bleeding, dehydration, swelling (especially of the feet), and a general lethargy. Although acute phosphate nephropathy does seem to be more common in those over the age of 55 or in those already taking a medication that affects the kidneys, it can strike anyone.

The FDA has recently mandated that OSPs contain a so‑called “boxed warning,” which is a very serious step. If you or a loved one has used an OSP and suffered a kidney injury, contact us. We may be able to help you receive compensation for your injuries.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC), patients in American hospitals come down with over 2 million hospital-acquired infections each year, 90,000 of which result in death. Nor are nursing home patients immune: The CDC estimates that this population suffers another 1.5 million preventable infections each year, for a total of 3.5 million facility-acquired infections annually. While these numbers are grim enough on their own, they become even more so when you realize that, by comparison, the incidence of new AIDS infections ranges from 38,000 to 56,000 per year, while AIDS deaths number about 16,000 per year. Given the lack of news coverage regarding the number of deaths caused by infections, it could be called a silent epidemic.

The number of such infections has been on the rise in recent years, although experts disagree about the reasons. Some point to the rise in the number of infectious agents that are resistant to some or all of the antibiotics used to treat infections. Others point to the increasing prevalence of HMOs, which can result in patients’ not being treated by a specialist trained to recognize an infection until after it has become established, when it is more difficult to treat. Others claim that the infection rate is the same as it has always been, and it is just that reporting has gotten better.

Many authorities reject hospitals’ traditional response to complaints about infections acquired in their facilities–that a certain number of infections is inevitable–and have concluded that most of these infections result from the failure of the hospital or its staff to strictly follow the rules intended to prevent the infections.

Revolutions

The response to this information has led to a legal revolution that will hopefully bring about a health-care revolution. More than half of the states have passed laws requiring hospital-acquired infections to be reported to state health authorities, so people have a better idea of the scope of the problem. The CDC itself has given the issue much more attention than it ever did in the past, and has recently issued guidelines that hospitals and nursing homes should follow to prevent infections in their patients. So has the Joint Commission, a body that gives hospitals their accreditation and whose regulations are considered by many to be a good statement of the standards that hospitals should follow.

These changes are not just regulatory, but also legal. Lawyers who counsel hospitals and nursing homes have taken these standards seriously, and they advise their clients to enact protocols to ensure that these standards are met, rules that can include something as simple as requiring the staff to wash or otherwise disinfect their hands when moving from one patient to another.

Lawyers also advise hospitals to regularly screen patients for the presence of drug-resistant organisms and to regularly use instruments that have been pretreated with antibiotics to prevent infections before they occur. In recent years, based on these recommendations, many facilities have overhauled their policies and procedures that are intended to prevent infections, even imposing penalties on doctors and staff who are caught failing to obey the new, stricter rules.

Lawsuits

However, because not all hospitals and nursing homes have gotten the message, and because some of them allow profits to come before patient care, another legal avenue is being pursued: litigation. With the problem of hospital-acquired infections now well known, and with the enactment of many new regulations designed to address the issue, hospitals are finding it harder to avoid liability when a patient does become infected.

In some rare cases, juries are awarding tens of millions of dollars to patients who contracted serious bacterial infections while they were patients at hospitals or nursing homes, infections that often involve drug-resistant, flesh-eating bacteria and that lead to death or to the loss of limbs and organs. Most experts agree that the publicity given to the problem has also made jurors more aware of the problem, and so less tolerant of a hospital’s lack of a similar awareness and concern.

Despite increased awareness, lawsuits regarding facility-acquired infections can be difficult to win. Although the fact of the infection is known, the cause is often difficult to pinpoint. In some cases, the medical records allow experts to determine the likely source or cause of the infection, but, in others, it is not possible to know exactly where the infection came from and, therefore, who is at fault. This uncertainty means hospital infection cases must be handled very carefully by experienced lawyers to ensure that the injured patient or his or her surviving family have their day in court.

If you feel that you or someone you love may have been a victim of a preventable infection, contact us. We can help you determine the best course of action for you under the circumstances.

In a potentially helpful development, the federal government has passed new rules that limit the payments Medicare will make to a hospital to pay bills incurred in treating preventable infections and medical errors the hospital should have avoided. These same regulations also specify that neither may the hospital bill the patient for this care.

Proponents of these regulations claim that making the hospitals pay for their own mistakes will give them a financial incentive to take steps to prevent infections and errors that can be avoided. However, some ask whether Medicare will be able to adequately monitor these rules, while others ask whether these rules might endanger patients because hospitals are unwilling to provide high-quality care if they know they will not be paid.

Rarely a year passes without the announcement of some new wonder drug to treat another disease. While more and better drugs are usually considered a good thing, the increase in the number of drugs available and in the number of drugs the average person takes has led to an explosion in the number of errors made in prescriptions.
These errors can take all kinds of forms and can occur in many different ways. Sometimes a drug other than the one prescribed is provided, or the correct drug is provided in the wrong dosage. Sometimes a drug is prescribed that interacts negatively with another drug the person is taking and the patient is not warned of the danger. Sometimes the mistake is made by the doctor prescribing the drug, sometimes by the pharmacist filling the prescription, sometimes by the person administering the prescribed drug. Mistakes can occur in hospitals, nursing homes, and the corner drugstore. Regardless of the many different ways that prescription problems can occur, they all share one thing: They can be serious and potentially deadly.
A recent study concluded that out of 3 billion prescriptions filled each year, 51.5 million of them contain some kind of error. Although reliable statistics are hard to come by, these errors lead to thousands of unnecessary hospitalizations and hundreds of unnecessary deaths.
Interestingly, many consider the primary reason for the rise in errors to be financial—the doctors who write the prescriptions, the pharmacists who fill them, and the nurses who often administer them are pressured to serve more patients in less time, increasing profits, but also increasing the risk of an error. Others point to the rise in the marketing of drugs directly to patients. Patients are more likely to go to their doctors and demand a prescription for some drug they saw on television, leading to more prescriptions and more chances for error.
Several solutions to this problem have been suggested. The first is also the easiest: Slow down and make sure the prescription is correct. The second is to install more safeguards, such as having another person check the prescription. Another solution is to make sure that different drugs or different dosages don’t look similar, reducing the chance that the wrong bottle will be used. Yet another suggested solution is to make sure that pills are always available in many dosages, which will prevent people from having to break their pills into halves or quarters, possibly exceeding the intended dosage.
Cases involving prescription errors, which can involve claims of negligence, medical malpractice, and products liability, and which require a great deal of expert testimony, can be very complicated to pursue. If you or someone you know has been injured due to a prescription error, call us. We would be happy to discuss your case with you.