Medical Advice

You may need an attorney. Expect the hospital to charge you with stealing their clamp.

My step daughter is a registered nurse and the head orthopedic surgical nurse in a hospital San Diego CA. Each doctor orders his/her preferred surgical set up prior to surgery, right down to the number of clips he/she wants. Each and every piece is precisely accounted for and arranged precisely as the Doc orders. Immediately after the surgery each and every piece is counted and inventoried against the original setup ordered. If they don't match, other than for those items that are supposed to be left in the patient (like a metal knee joint for example) all hell breaks loose. The patient is x-rayed to determine if there was a miscount prior to surgery or if something was left in the patient.

The clip will have to come out. By now someone from Hospital administration has visited your friend to work out a settlement. Get an attorney. If you want a legal firm of sharks I would recommend Contrada & Associates. This is a slam dunk.

If your friend is well enough at this point have him/her immediately begin a daily diary of everything he's told by anyone on the medical staff and anyone from administration and by his doctor. He should also record his pain levels throughout the day and his activities such as walking, eating etc. If your friend isnt well enough yet, have a family member do it. Its important.

Most of all I wish your friend a speedy recovery and good health in the future. Open gall bladder surgery is a very serious surgery with a long recovery. He/she shouldnt have to under go this additional stress while trying to recover. I hope your friend has someone who can help them navigate them through this.

That's interesting, i have one also, but i read that occasionally its done on purpose to block the bile duct.

Have to disagree that this is a slam dunk. Not that I'm discounting having to go thru surgery a second time, but I'm not hearing that there was any damage or long-term problems from the clip. No damage, the hospital and doctor will fight like mad.

My husband had his appendix out years ago, full surgery not laparoscopic. Doctor screwed up and he was in ICU for four days and had to have a second surgery to fix bleeders. We couldn't find an attorney to take the case - no long term harm, bills were paid by insurance. And I am an attorney (not med-mal though) so I was talking to competent, qualified attorneys.

Medical malpractice is not the lucky lottery ticket it used to be. Barring permanent damage, I don't think recovery is likely. JMO.

Contrada and Associates.
"Because Justice shouldn't be blind."
The best totally illogical but catchy slogan ever.

Grr...thanks, justread...now I have that jingle going through my head.

If your friend is well enough at this point have him/her immediately begin a daily diary of everything he's told by anyone on the medical staff and anyone from administration and by his doctor. He should also record his pain levels throughout the day and his activities such as walking, eating etc. If your friend isnt well enough yet, have a family member do it. Its important.

Much as I disagree vehemently with Holland on most things, after reading this paragraph I would say that if I were all screwed up from a botched surgery and then dosed with a completely inadequate amount of morphine, I'd want Holland sitting next to my bed, caring for me. For one thing she'd keep my pistol out of reach so that when I finally did get my morphine I couldn't shoot at flies on the ceiling. You'd be amazed at how unreasonable hospital staff can be at times...

The author failed to stress the importance of this paragraph. Keeping a diary can literally be a life saver. Hospital care is entirely dependent on the quality of the nursing staff caring for the patient right along with the care giver to consumer ratio. In plain English, if you have one nurse and 30 demanding patients, it doesn't matter how good the nurse is; the place is drastically understaffed. Which, by the bye, is the way the hospital administration likes it. Lower payroll means more profit.

Everything the patient is told, everything that happens along with a date-time stamp and the names involved gets written down. All proscribed medications and activities, everything. Response time to a call for help gets written down. Pain and suffering get written down. If the patient is in absolute agony and the staff refuses to provide adequate pain medication for any reason at all, that gets written down.

If the patient is too screwed up to write, and being tanked up on pain meds will do that to you (whee! I'm Happy!) get family members to take turns sitting and helping care for the poor sod. Again, this might be a life saver.

I'm not a lawyer, but I would suppose that if a jury heard this case they'd likely come back with a guilty verdict in ten minutes or so. The doc screwed up, pure and simple. The trouble is that it will cost over $100,000 to try the case, and what with postponements and the opposition's delaying tactics it will be 5 years before it actually gets in front of a judge. Then the appeals begin. So, 25 years later the patient finally wins and tries to collect the big reward - probably $10 or $12 grand. Talk to a real attorney with experience in this area for 30 minutes and see what the case is worth, then negotiate your own settlement.

If you need an experienced attorney, here's a good one.

John Coble
Albrechta and Coble, Ltd.
4334 W Central Ave # 224
Toledo, OH 43615
(419) 841-8584

John has experience in this area and is so honest I'd shoot dice with him over the phone.

Was it MUO?

Sue, sue, sue. Here we go. It's the american way.

Surgical clips are commonly used in this type of surgery. They double clip the upstream common bile duct to assure there is no leakage of bile or possible stones after the gallbladder is removed. They single clip the portion of the bile duct that is removed with the gallbladder and they then cut between the 2 sets of clips and remove the gallbladder. I would make sure that what your friend was told was 'clip' and not 'clamp', as someone else said, they are very different things. If they had found something that was not supposed to be there, I'm sure your friend would have been whisked immediately back to surgery to have it removed, to lessen the chance of damage or infection. If that has not happened, I doubt that anything untoward took place during surgery.

They discovered bile leakage today. They attempted a endoscope to detect where the leak was but that was unsuccessful. Now, they need to schedule surgery again. There are just so many questions about this entire thing. The family needs guidance.

Are they looking for legal guidance or medical guidance?

I agree with what nana said. It is not uncommon to read "surgical clips present" in an X-ray report. They typically are harmless and sometimes left in the body on purpose.

You're probably confused because it is the former Medical College of Ohio.

In fact, they are left as a marker for a breast lump.

medical advice- go to Bassetts and get yourself some organic bee batter, moon root, and all natural bean oil. Rub that all over the area and everything will be good.

legal advice- watch the next jerry springer episode and hire the first attorney commercial that says, "Only serious cases considered".

Real advice- Let your friend and their family make the decisions. Get second medical opinions, and look on internet or phone book for attorney. Most will answer questions over phone. While TT is helpful for most topics and can guide you in right direction, offering medical advice or legal advice is hard to justify when it comes from "user names".

pnjperr, they need to trust their doctors. NO surgery is without risks and they are always clearly stated when the patient signs a consent form. As patients, we never think that shit will happen to us but sometimes it does, it's the risk we all take. My mom had a bile leak after her gallbladder surgery, too, but that was from the common bile duct tearing when the drain was removed. She leaked bile and was in the hospital 3 weeks postop. No one messed up, it just happens sometimes. She was a heavy smoker, that may have contributed (the great thing was, after 3 weeks in-house, she never touched another cig and this was 20-25 years ago).

All major surgery is a tricky thing and everyone has a different experience. I would like to know why they couldn't do a lap chole, why they had to go open, that is rather uncommon these days. I used to work for a general surgeon who was the head of surgery at Chuckie's and Riverside and he prided himself at being able to do a chole thru the smallest incision possible, most times less than 2 inches, and this was before laparoscopy. He also had the fewest postop complications of his peers, but he had some patients who were out of the norm and didn't heal well for one reason or another...weight, drinking and smoking being the biggest blocks to healing well...and we dealt with them the best we could, including having to take them back to surgery. It happens, it doesn't mean someone messed up.

Good luck to your friend and peace to you and their family.

Hope your relative heals and feels better soon!

I recently sought legal advice regarding negligence/malpractice that resulted in permanent brain damage of a relative. In addition, while she was in the hospital for about a week getting a minor procedure done, the hospital failed to give her daily medication necessary to keep her alive. She suffered terribly. Only when I threatened legal action did she finally get the drug days later. The hospital "suits" the next day apologized profusely, saying it shouldn't have happened. I even got a letter from the hospital, stating the same thing. When I told friends and co-workers what had happened, they told me it was a "slam dunk" malpractice case and that I should contact a lawyer. I spent weeks looking for an attorney. Nobody would take the case. Why? The lawyers told me that Ohio has the worst malpractice law, passed by Taft, in the nation. Ninety-six percent of all malpractice cases go to trial, and are not settled, because doctors know the law is on their side. And of the cases that go to trial, only 14-percent are ever won by the patient. Pretty bad odds. So there is really no such thing as a "slam dunk." Maybe there was before the law was passed, but not now in Ohio. After calling most of the malpractice attorneys in the yellow pages, and getting repeatedly rejected, I decided to give up.

Also, when malpractice attorneys advertise that they don't take a penny unless they win the case for you, that may be true. But you have to pay $2,000-$3,000 up front so the attorney can pass it by a "medical expert" they hire to review the records to give their opinion on whether you have a case. If the expert says "no," then you're out $2,000-$3,000.

If I were you, I would ask for a meeting with the hospital administrator. Maybe they will try and make it right somehow - i.e., cover any deductible, offer free physical therapy, longer stay in the hospital to recover, perhaps even a small financial settlement - to avoid a trial. But as I said, with the law in Ohio, they know doctors are very protected against losing such cases and would not feel much pressure to settle.

Good luck!

This brings up an interesting point. For argument's sake, what would be an acceptable amount of money for a lawsuit? What is a person worth? I know that emotionally we consider some people to be priceless, but legally, why don't we assign a dollar amount to prevent crazy amounts of money in a lawsuit?

The combination of so-called "tort reform" earlier in the last decade, a very conservative Ohio Supreme Court and juries delivering less plaintiff verdicts have drastically reduced the number of medical malpractice claims brought in the last 5-10 years. The way things are now, you practically have to have the hospital write a letter detailing how they screwed up and how negligent they were in their care in order to get any money out of them.

The funny thing is that doctors used to say that rising med mal insurance premiums forced them to keep raising the prices on medical care. Now, the lawsuits have dropped off, doctors premiums have dropped, but health care costs continue to rise. So who really benefits from "tort reform"?

attorneys

The only growing industries in America legal, pharmacy, healthcare.

Two of those three are growing. Legal industry is flat. A combination of too many lawyers being minted every year and technology advances (among other factors) have meant tougher times for attorneys and support staff. If some kid asked me today what industry to get into, I would suggest healthcare or IT.

Had a friend a few years ago have an abdominal surgery. Post surgery was very difficult. Doctors went back in and found an instrument left behind. Fast foerard, he is fine now, very rich and owns a mansion and a yacht.
Time for a lawyer.

A mansion and a yacht?
Elmer Fudd?