Houston Medical Malpractice Law Blog

While the majority of people living in Texas who seek medical attention will receive proper treatment, between 10 and 20 percent of patients may end up with an incorrect diagnosis or one that is not made in a timely manner. Although there is more attention paid to medication and surgical errors, diagnostic errors are actually more common. Even more alarming, this type of medical malpractice occurs mostly in primary-care settings and is related to common medical issues like pneumonia or urinary tract infections.

Misdiagnosis is not a new problem. A study done by the Harvard Medical Practice Study in 1991 found that 14 percent of adverse events were due to diagnostic errors and that three-quarters of these mistakes were related to negligence. In spite of the severity of issues these mistakes cause and their frequency, little attention is paid to them. In the 1999 Institute of Medicine's report on medical errors, misdiagnosis was only mentioned two times.

Expectant mothers in Texas may be interested to hear that the Food and Drug Administration has advised pregnant women not to take valproate sodium products. According to the FDA, studies show that IQ scores in children whose mothers took valproate while they were pregnant are lower than other children's scores.

Valproate medications have been approved to prevent migraines as well as treat epilepsy and manic bipolar disorder episodes. However, the director of the Division of Neurology Products in the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and research states that the treatment benefits of valproate are far outweighed by the birth injuries they can contribute to. He advises that pregnant women should never take valproate or products containing valproate.

There are "bullies" in just about every profession in Texas and the rest of the country, but when the bullies in question are doctors and nurses, it can affect the safety of patients. In recent years, there has been growing concern that disruptive behavior from doctors and nurses is directly leading to surgical errors. An organization that accredits hospitals has published standards that state disruptive behavior includes things like physical threats, verbal outbursts and refusing to perform duties or answer questions.

This concern is backed up by research data: A recent study was completed by the The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety that surveyed more than 4,500 health care workers. More than three-quarters of of respondents reported disruptive behavior from doctors and nearly two-thirds reported disruptive behavior from nurses. Those surveyed stated that two-thirds of these behaviors were a factor in medical errors, and a third were a factor in patient deaths.

Texas residents may have noticed that robotic surgery has spread across the U.S. in recent years. In fact, the use of robot machines has grown from approximately 112,000 surgeries in 2008 to over 360,000 in 2012. The robot surgery machines cost $1.45 million and hospitals, as a way of competing for business, have put it into their websites and advertising to attract patients. The machine, called the Da Vinci, has been rated as highly effective in certain kinds of surgeries, particularly where there is only a small space in which to operate.

In recent years, however, there have been a number of reports of injuries and deaths in operations using robot surgery machines. Some cases have resulted in jury findings of medical malpractice and large awards to injured persons or their survivors. In some cases in which persons were injured or died, expert testimony questioned the use of robots, asserting, in effect, that it was not appropriate to use such complicated machinery for a simple procedure.