Patient Safety Tips: How to Take Charge of Your Healthcare
Patient safety measures help prevent mistakes and medical malpractice. As studies show that preventable injuries and errors are on the rise, it is no surprise that injured patients initiate most medical malpractice lawsuits. At the Yost Legal Group, we are too familiar with the injuries that occur with what began as a regular hospital visit....
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Injury During Spinal Surgery
Spinal surgeries can be very long and involved procedures. Despite the fact that it is not common, patients are at risk of a spinal injury during surgery – such as nerve root or spinal cord damage resulting in paralysis, numbness, loss of bladder and/or bowel function, limited mobility or disabling pain. Sometimes the hardware implanted...
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Compartment Syndrome, Post-Operative Onset
Compartment syndrome is a potentially devastating post-operative complication in which increased pressure results in insufficient blood supply to muscle and nerve tissue within the effected internal space. Causes of compartment syndrome in the post-operative patient include: being left too long in a position during surgery that blocked one or more blood vessels; or, having bandages...
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Paralysis Caused By Spinal Surgery
An ideal outcome in spinal surgery is dependent of the coordination of efforts by the surgeon, anesthesiologist, and neurophysiologist. Because patients are under general anesthesia during surgery, techniques for examining the nervous system for potential injuries can be somewhat limited. Intraoperative spinal cord monitoring (IOM) allows the surgeon to record the electrical signals transferred along...
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Mismatched Blood Transfusion And Transfusion Reaction
A blood transfusion is a common medical procedure in which donated blood is provided to a patient through a narrow tube (IV catheter) placed within a vein in the arm. Blood transfusions become medically necessary for many reasons, including a need to replace blood in patients who suffer significant bleeding as the result of a...
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Injury During Cardiac Catheterization
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one cause of death globally. Because more people die annually from heart disease than from any other cause, it is important to take preventative measures to examine how well your heart is working. Diagnostic procedures and medical tests are commonly performed by medical professionals to monitor the heart and...
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Hypoxic Brain Injury- Intubation
Tracheal intubation (TI), usually simply referred to as intubation, is a procedure performed by medical professionals in the setting of respiratory failure and shock. This procedure involves inserting a flexible plastic tube into the patient’s trachea (windpipe) to maintain an open airway, assist with breathing and can also serve as a channel through which to...
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Perforation of Small Intestine During Laparoscopic Cholecystectomy
Laparoscopic cholecystectomy, commonly referred to as a “lap choly,” is a procedure that involves removing the gallbladder. A patient may need removal if the gallbladder is full of gallstones (cholelithiasis), inflamed, or infected (cholecystitis). When a lap choly is needed, laparoscopic techniques are used to perform this minimally invasive surgery with the assistance of a...
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PREVENTABLE MEDICAL MISTAKES IN HOSPITALS
Hospital-acquired conditions, also known as “never events”, are particularly awful medical mistakes that should not ever occur. Some examples of these preventable errors include: Operating on the wrong place on the patient’s body Discharging a newborn to the wrong parents Leaving a foreign object, such as a scalpel or sponge, inside the body Mismatched blood...
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Colonoscopies Help Millions of People Annually, But What Can Go Wrong?
There are over 14 million colonoscopies performed annually. This can be a life-saving procedure for many individuals. Colonoscopy exams allow doctors to go inside the large intestine and the colon with flexible tubing attached to a small video recorder. The purpose is usually to use the video image from the recorder to identify polyps, ulcers,...
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