Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf is a New York Plaintiff's personal injury law firm specializing in automobile accidents, construction accidents, medical malpractice, products liability, police misconduct and all types of New York personal injury litigation.

Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice

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Best Law Firms - Medical Malpractice - 2016 The attorneys at Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf have more than 90 years of experience representing patients who have been injured or have died as the result of medical malpractice. Eight of our lawyers have been recognized in Best Lawyers in America in the area of medical malpractice. Additionally, attorney Jeffrey Bloom co-chairs the Medical Malpractice Committee of The New York State Trial Lawyers. At GGCRBHS&M, we seek to help you recover compensation so that you can afford the care you need in order for you and your family to begin to recover. Our experienced medical malpractice attorneys will work with qualified experts in the medical profession to help prove your claim. Throughout your case we will remain attentive and responsive to your medical and legal needs and meticulously prepare your case for trial. When your family suffers as a result of negligence, you deserve maximum compensation.

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In a recent article, Sandra G. Boodman from the Washington Post writes about the case of a man whose doctors failed to diagnose Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF) for months until he consulted with a well traveled gastroenterologist who suspected FMF. FMF is a disorder caused by a gene mutation. this disorder is known to affect Sephardic Jews, whose ancestry is Middle Eastern, as well as non-Jews from the Middle East, Italy and Armenia.

43 year old Jeffrey Sank suffered from recurrent abdominal pain for nearly a year. At the beginning attacks were intermittent but after several months the pain increased in severity and intensity. Jeffrey visited with multiple doctors including two gastroenterologists, a kidney specialist and an infectious-disease physician.  The infectious-disease specialist suspected he had FMF but but did not pursue it after Sank told him he wasn’t of Middle Eastern descent. The last gastroenterologist he saw also suspected it was FMF and even though Sank again denied any Middle Eastern descent again, he decided to prescribe him colchicine, a mainstay therapy for FMF. The drug worked immediately and the abdominal attacks almost stopped. Later on genetic tests demonstrated that Sank had indeed inherited mutated genes from both his parents.

 

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Failure to diagnose or to treat priapism, a medical condition of prolonged penile erection that is unrelated to sexual stimulation, can result in serious complications such as permanent erectile dysfunction or disfigurement of the penis.  Priapism is not very common but as a result of the use of erectile dysfunction medication the potential for serious complications from Priapism is on the rise. Other medications such as intracavernosal agents, some antihypertensive agents , some psychotropic drugs, anticoagulants, cocaine, certain hormones, and ginkgo Biloba are also known to cause priapism. Diseases such as sickle cell disease can also cause this painful medical condition.

When a patient suffers from priapism it is crucial that the doctor determines if it is a case of ischemic or nonischemic priapism. Ischemic priapism is a medical emergency that requires immediate treatment. Usually the patient will receive an intracavernous injection of an alpha-adrenergic sympathomimetic agent followed by a surgical shunting procedure if necessary. Nonischemic priapism is not considered an emergency and will usually resolve by itself without treatment.

In its “Case of the Month” the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants looks at the case of a middle aged patient who was diagnosed with ischemic priapism associated with trazodone use. Read the complete article here

 

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34 year old Kelly Mayhew died from medical malpractice last May in New York. She had traveled from Maryland with her mom to get cosmetic silicone injections of her buttock in Queens New York, City. Unfortunately, the doctor who injected her was an unlicensed phony plastic surgeon who fled the scene soon  after Mayhew started to gurgle and struggle to breathe leaving her victim to die.  The fake doctor never surrendered and the NYPD believe she know lives in England. The case is currently being presented to a grand jury in front of which the city Medical Examiner said that the cause of the death was “systemic silicone emboli due to cosmetic silicone injections of buttocks” and “the manner of death was homicide”. Read more in the NY Daily News

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imageFailure to diagnose or delay to treat herpes simplex in the eye area can result in serious personal injury such as episcleritis, keratopathy, iritis, blepharitis, conjunctivitis, uveitis, keratitis, retinitis, optic neuritis, glaucoma, proptosis, cicatricial lid retractions, and extraocular muscle palsies. In “case of the month: a lesion near the eye”, the Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants looks at the case of a 19-year-old man  who visited his healthcare provider with erythema and irritation of the skin adjacent to his right eye. The patient  noted the irritation for the first time after a military exercise in a sandy environment. Read the case here 

 

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Failure to diagnose a medical condition can be medical malpractice. However in some rare cases patients can suffer from unknown conditions that even the the most skilled doctors have failed to diagnose despite extensive clinical investigations. These patients now have a new possibility to submit their case to  the some of the nation’s leading diagnostic teams. The Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) just launched an  online application portal that will allow patients suffering from a rare undiagnosed disease to submit an application to get their case studied by a top national network of clinical sites. Read more here

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imageHospital medical malpractice is the third leading cause of death in this country, behind heart disease and cancer.

In a recent article in the New York Times, a retired transplant surgeon explains how an unresponsive medical staff left him no other choice but to break into  into the crash cart, a box on wheels containing equipment hospitals use to resuscitate patients and pull out two liters of saline solution which he ran into his daughter’s IV Line to prevent her from dying.

Unfortunately most patients and their families don’t have the medical knowledge and the means to make things different if the staff is negligent or a medical error is being committed. Here are the reactions of some of the readers to this article.

 

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Jeffrey BloomOur Partner Jeffrey Bloom will be a speaker at the “Mount Sinai Update: Breast Imaging Conference” to be held at The New York Academy of Medicine  on October 12, 2015 .  Jeff will speak from 10:15 AM to  11:15 AM and his presentation will cover the plaintiff’s attorney’s perspective on breast imaging malpractice.  After the presentation Jeff will also participate on a Medico-legal Issues Panel. To register click here.

At the completion of this course, the participants should be able to:

  • Discuss the new ACR BI-RADS 5th Edition terminology for breast imaging findings on mammography, ultrasound and MRI.
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In 2001, Pam Tusiani died as a result of Medical Malpractice in New York  after she fatally  reacted to Parnate, an antidepressant she had been prescribed by a treatment center that was providing medical care without a license. The young woman was suffering from  borderline personality disorder, a disease often misdiagnosed.

Using the settlement from their malpractice suit, Pam’s parents started the Borderline Personality Disorder Resource Center at New York Presbyterian Hospital in 2003. Last July the Tusianis hosted some of New York’s top neuroscientists and psychiatrists at a day-long event to review the latest science on BPD and devise new avenues for research.

Read more in The Washington Post 

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Jail MedicineMedical malpractice and negligent care to inmates is the subject of a new article in Fair Warning.  The author, Brian Joseph, looks at various cases of inmates who have died as the result of medical negligence committed by private companies that provides correctional medical services. Some of these companies have been expanding at a fast pace all over the nation despite controversy over inmate deaths. The author also looks at the history of health services to jails and prisons from the 1970’s when wardens and sheriffs lacking medical expertise started to ask for the help of private medical providers until today when private companies have taken over most of the prison healthcare system and put profit over inmates health care.