Post-Surgical Errors and Infections
Post-operative care can be every bit as important as the surgery itself. After surgery with general anesthesia, patients are weak and their immune systems are suppressed. It is critical for patient health at this stage that patients be carefully monitored for complications and that they receive proper wound care at the surgery site. Post-operative infections can be so severe that they prove fatal to a patient who otherwise would have recuperated fully after a successful surgery.
Bertling Law Group is a California medical malpractice law firm staffed by attorneys with decades of experience fighting for patients as well as defending doctors and hospitals accused of malpractice. Our firm possesses the skills needed to determine when malpractice occurred, to prove it in court when necessary, and attempt to recover maximum financial compensation for malpractice victims and their families.
If a patient takes a turn for the worse after surgery, it can be hard for the patient or family to know the reason. Our goals at Bertling Law Group are to find answers to your questions about what went wrong, to hold hospitals accountable for those errors so they don’t happen again, and help you get maximum compensation for the harm done. If you think that you or a loved one were harmed by a post-surgical error or infection in a California hospital or any VA or military hospital nationwide, call Bertling Law Group at 844-295-7558 for a free consultation.
Post-Surgical Infections Are Serious and Deadly
Nosocomial infections – infectious diseases that originate in the hospital – are not rare; they occur in as many as one in every ten hospital patients and one in every five patients in an ICU. They happen so often and are so serious that hospital-acquired infections are one of the ten most common causes of death in the United States. This tragedy is an epidemic that must be seriously addressed and stopped on an institutional level; medical malpractice lawsuits are one way to force institutional change.
You would expect hospital rooms, and ICU beds especially, to be regularly and thoroughly cleaned and disinfected. Yet the most deadly and hard to treat infectious diseases can be found precisely in these places. ICUs and recovery rooms are home to microbes nicknamed “superbugs” because they are extremely difficult to get rid of. Some of the most common of these hospital-acquired infections are C. diff and MRSA.
C. diff.
Antibiotic-associated Clostridium difficile (C. diff.) colitis, kills 14,000 people annually and afflicts thousands more with severe diarrhea and gastrointestinal distress. C. diff. is a bacteria that can naturally be found in the colon of any human, but the presence of other healthy gut bacteria works to keep C. diff. from overproducing and causing disease. Post-operative patients are at risk of a C. diff. outbreak when they are dosed with antibiotics that kill the healthy bacteria in the gut, making room for C. diff. to spiral out of control. The result is an inflammation of the colon known as colitis, which can be life-threatening if not promptly diagnosed and treated. C. difficile is aptly named; it is hard to treat and can be highly resistant to antibiotics.
If you or your loved one acquired C. diff. after surgery, it could be the fault of hospital staff who failed to administer antibiotics appropriately or adequately monitor the patient for post-operative infection.
MRSA
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a staph infection that doesn’t respond to treatment from the class of methicillin antibiotics. It instead has to be treated with the toxic medication Vancomycin which must be carefully delivered via a PICC line catheter intravenously near the heart. MRSA afflicts around 80,000 people every year, with about 11,000 patients dying from the disease due to sepsis or other causes. The majority of MRSA cases are known as HA-MRSA; the HA stands for “Hospital Acquired.”
Studies into the causes of HA-MRSA revealed that around 40% of all cases were the result of inadequate hand-washing by hospital staff. Other causes include failing to sufficiently sanitize surgical instruments between surgeries or failing to sterilize hardware such as pins or screws before they are inserted into the body during an operation. Doctors and hospitals can and should be held liable for these deadly and easily preventable mistakes.
Others
Other superbugs acquired in hospital settings include Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE), Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales (CRE), and gram-negative bacterial infections. These diseases are all highly resistant to antibiotics and drug treatment and can cause infections at the surgical site or in the bloodstream or cause life-threatening cases of meningitis or pneumonia.
Get Help With a Post-Surgical Error and Infection Malpractice Claim
If you or your loved one acquired a post-operative infection in the hospital, hospital staff and administrators are not likely to admit they are to blame for the infection. They may or may not be, but you owe it to yourself to find out. A skilled medical malpractice attorney at Bertling Law Group can help you get the answers to your questions. If hospital errors were to blame, we’ll hold them accountable for their mistakes to prevent future harm to other patients while making sure you get the financial help you need to deal with the damage their negligence has caused you.
Call Bertling Law Group today at 844-295-7558 for a free consultation. We only charge a fee after we are successful in gaining compensation for you.
