Although no surgical procedure can be considered risk-free, we trust the expertise of medical professionals to ensure a successful outcome. As with any procedure, however, accidents happen— but accidents involving anesthesia can have particularly damaging effects. A St. Louis anesthesia errors lawyer can help you understand your legal options if you or a loved one suffered harm due to a preventable mistake. Contact our medical malpractice attorneys today.
Anesthesia plays a critical role in health care that is difficult to overstate. It is also a highly technical matter, and even relatively minor errors can be exceptionally harmful.
Due to the impact of their work, medical professionals and medical facilities are held to a high standard of care. And this extends to their work with anesthesia, which can be as dangerous as it is important.
If your provider failed to uphold this standard, and you suffered harm due to an anesthesia error, meet with our St. Louis lawyers.
Doctors and other medical professionals are only human, and anyone can make a mistake. Simply making a mistake, however, does not reach the level of medical malpractice, which can support a legal claim.
Instead, medical malpractice refers to a failure to implement the same standard of care that other medical professionals with the same level of expertise would under similar circumstances. When it comes to medical professionals who administer anesthesia, the protocols are highly precise, and taking any action that their peers would not have, or vice versa, can translate to malpractice. The same is true of the facilities themselves, which are held to similarly high standards.
Our anesthesia lawyers can review the specific facts of your case in St. Louis to determine if you have grounds for a medical malpractice claim.
Unfortunately, surgical errors rank as one of the most common types of medical malpractice, and those involving anesthesia put patients at even higher risk.
Common anesthesia errors include:
The lawyers at Zevan Murphy, LLC in St. Louis have extensive experience with cases involving anesthesia errors and could help you hold your provider accountable for their negligence.
Anesthesia employs a wide range of medications, and dangerous medication errors like the following can occur:
Even a single mistake can have serious–and sometimes life-threatening– consequences for the patient.
Patients can be allergic to specific drugs used for anesthesia, and failure to accurately identify and adequately account for such allergies can prove extremely dangerous.
Anesthesia dosages must be carefully calibrated in order to be both effective and safe. When a patient receives too much anesthesia, it can lead to overdose, which has the potential to cause respiratory depression or cardiac arrest. When, on the other hand, too little anesthesia is administered, the patient runs the risk of awakening during surgery and of receiving woefully inadequate pain relief.
Incorrect dosage can be a function of ineffective preoperative assessment. This is a key component of medical care at every level and is especially important in relation to the administration of anesthesia.
Medical professionals are required to carefully monitor their patients’ vital signs in relation to the administration of anesthesia. Failure to do so properly can lead to dangerous complications that go undetected as well as to adverse health outcomes. Examples of the critical vital signs that must be carefully attended to include heart rate, carbon dioxide levels, oxygen saturation, and blood pressure.
Medical professionals are responsible for being well prepared to do their job safely and effectively. There is no room for exhaustion when it comes to performing surgery or any other procedure that requires anesthesia. The bottom line is that medical providers who are fatigued, who are not alert, or who are distracted by anything other than the task at hand pose a considerable risk to their patients.
Communication between the anesthesia team and the doctors, surgeons, and nurses on duty must be clear and effective. When there is a breakdown in communications or when the information communicated is incomplete, it can result in dangerous anesthesia errors.
At Zevan Murphy, LLC, our St. Louis attorneys can carefully investigate whether the anesthesia error stemmed from negligence and help you pursue the justice and compensation you deserve.
Common examples include:
Patients under anesthesia are extremely vulnerable, and close supervision and anesthesia providers must closely monitor patients under anesthesia to ensure their bodies are functioning appropriately, including getting enough blood flow and oxygen to support their hearts, brains, and other vital organs. If you or a loved one was harmed during a surgery, you should investigate whether a provider was negligent.
Yes. Although patients sign consent forms to accept known risks, patients cannot sign a consent form that accepts substandard medical care. Signing an informed consent form does not give away your legal rights; however, an attorney needs to review all documents carefully to understand the consequences of documents you have signed.
Furthermore, informed consent forms and conversations require that a patient understand both the benefits of a planned course of action, as well as the risks. If harm results from healthcare, and you may have made a different choice if you fully understood the risk, you may be able to claim lack of informed consent – a potential basis for a malpractice claim.
Anesthesia awareness occurs when a patient who is meant to be asleep under anesthesia is cognitively aware of what is happening during a procedure or surgery, and may feel pain during the surgery. Anesthesia awareness may be grounds for a lawsuit, depending upon the circumstances. If a health care provider gave inadequate anesthesia, and the inadequate anesthesia caused the patient’s awareness, the patient may have a claim for medical malpractice and emotional distress.
Anesthesiologists, certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs), and anesthesiology assistants may all be responsible for anesthesia errors. At times, non-physician providers may be supervised by a physician who is not an anesthesiologist, such as the surgeon performing the procedure. In that circumstance, the operating surgeon may also be held responsible for an anesthesia error if he or she did not properly supervise the provider managing the anesthesia.
In order to prove a malpractice case, you have to prove (1) standard of care: the healthcare provider did something or failed to do something that a reasonable healthcare provider should have done; (2) causation: the healthcare provider’s actions or failure to act caused harm; and (3) damages- harm was caused. Experienced medical malpractice attorneys understand how to work up a malpractice case and what evidence is needed to support each part of your claim.
No, a bad outcome is not enough to prove malpractice. Unfortunately, even with the best care, some patients still experience complications and bad outcomes. To pursue a medical malpractice case, attorneys need to prove that the bad outcome was caused by medical malpractice and negligence. If a doctor or nurse’s negligence caused the bad outcome, you may be able to pursue a medical malpractice case.
Legal deadlines (called statutes of limitations) vary. In Missouri and Illinois, most statutes of limitations expire two years from the date of malpractice; however, there are exceptions that may cause the statute of limitations to be shorter or longer. If you think you may have a claim, you should always contact an attorney as soon as possible to give yourself the best chance of pursuing a lawsuit.
In an anesthesia claim, the most important evidence is the anesthesiology record and detailed vital signs and medication administration records. Patients may have difficulty obtaining a complete anesthesia record without involving an attorney. Some electronic medical record systems produce only a snapshot of the complete anesthesia data available. When our office investigates anesthesia malpractice claims, we ensure we have the complete anesthesiology record so we can fully understand what happened during the care at issue.
In most states, a medical expert witness must testify that the defendant health care providers were negligent. Doctors are held to the same standard as other doctors in the same specialty or with the same types of experience. Because health care providers should be held to the same standard as their peers, one of their peers needs to explain to the jury why the defendant healthcare provider committed malpractice.
The amount of compensation you could receive depends on several factors, such as your insurance coverage, limits imposed by tort reform laws, the total of your medical expenses, and the severity of your injuries. While some people may not be able to recover much money, others may be able to recover enough money to support themselves for the rest of their lives. An experienced attorney can guide you through this process and advise you of the value of your claim.
If you have suffered as a result of a preventable anesthesia error, contact a St. Louis anesthesia errors lawyer right away. Waiting to seek legal representation can prevent you from filing a claim and receiving the compensation you deserve.