Although this tragic event happened in the UK, many people are dying daily from doctors failing to diagnose and not understanding their patient’s symptoms.

15 year old Alina had been diagnosed and treated for tuberculosis in 2009 and had appeared to recover from the illness.

In 2010, she became severely ill with severe weight loss and repeated vomiting.  Her doctor would not listen to her parent’s description of the illness.  Instead, he said she was suffering from bulimia and her symptoms were due to mental illness.  He advised that she see a psychiatrist or spiritual healer.

In 2011, Alina died of tuberculosis.

Early detection is the best way to prevent major problems, so if your doctor failed to diagnose the condition, you should talk to a lawyer about his or her liability. We’ve been programmed to trust our doctors without question, and in most cases, that trust is well placed. Unfortunately, hurried work, fatigue, and other situations can cause a doctor to fail to diagnose a serious condition. When that happens, you need to explore your legal options to prevent it from happening again to someone else and to get the money you need to pay for treatment.

In 2005, there were 750,000 hip and knee implant surgeries and that number is expected to double by 2030.

As implant surgeries double, so do revision surgeries.  Revision surgeries often include long hospital stays and custom prosthetic and bone grafts meant to correct faulty or incorrectly implanted devices.

Did you know that you have a right to keep the faulty joint in question?  The joint was paid for when you had your initial surgery and it is now your property.  Since many reasons exist why the implant might fail, if you have the physical device available for independent examination it will be helpful in determining any liability.

According to Drugwatch, “in 2011 a federal court judge ruled that joint replacement patients maintain the right to keep their faulty device should a revision surgery need to be performed.  In addition, the judge ruled that patients had the right to have the faulty device inspected by a company of their choosing.”

Often, device manufacturers may be more focused on device sales than the safety of their products.  Companies that have come under fire for defective medical devices include NexGen and DePuy.

If you have been injured by a defective implant, our injury lawyers can help you today.  You may be awarded compensation for your medical expenses as well as your pain and suffering by a judge.  Don’t suffer alone.  We at Cappolino, Dodd, Krebs LLP have years of experienced helping those who have been injured by defective products.

Pfizer has once again been called out on the damages that their drug, Prempro, caused to women (manufactured by their subsidiary, Wyeth Company).  Last week, they were asked to pay at least $4 million in damages to a woman who developed cancer after taking the drug.

A Connecticut jury ruled that the drug is an “unreasonably dangerous product.”  More than six million women have taken Prempro and related menopause drugs to treat symptoms such as hot flashes and mood swings before a 2002 study linked the drug to cancer.  The drug was officially released in 1995.  Before Prempro, women would take a combination of estrogen based Premarin and progestin based Provera to relieve their symptoms.

According to the Bloomberg News, the jury also concluded that Wyeth “was reckless, and they misrepresented the risks and benefits of its drugs to doctors and patients.”

Pfizer has now lost 11 of 20 Prempro jury verdicts.

Post-marketing reports of severe bleeding events in Pradaxa patients has led the FDA to launch an investigation into potential Pradaxa internal bleeding side effects. Pradaxa is a direct thrombin inhibitor, or anticoagulant, which was approved by the FDA in October 2010, and is currently manufactured by drug firm Boehringer Ingelheim. Anticoagulants reduce blood clotting that can lead to stroke, which is why they are also commonly called blood thinners. Pradaxa was specifically designed to reduce the risk of stroke and blood clots in patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation, a medical condition in which part of the heart doesn’t beat as it should. Atrial fibrillation is the most common type of heart rhythm abnormality; it can lead to blood clots forming and can increase your risk of stroke. Unfortunately, despite the fact that Pradaxa has only been on the market for a year and a half, it may already be linked to hundreds of internal bleeding side effects and deaths. If you took the blood thinner Pradaxa and have since experienced a major side effect, contact a Pradaxa attorney immediately.

On March 12, a KCEN advertising executive, Jerry Crocker, filed suit against Scott &White Memorial hospital.  The suit stemmed from a misstep by Scott & White when they left an 8 inch metal retractor in his abdomen following surgery to remove cancer from his stomach.  Crocker alleges that this caused him even more health problems.

After Crocker received a six figure bill for surgeries performed at Scott & White, and after he had multiple surgeries following his original surgery, he decided it was time to file the lawsuit.

Crocker believes the subsequent three surgeries and complications were a direct result of the retractor left behind.  Crocker originally believed that he would spend about 5 days in the hospital recuperating from his original cancer surgery, yet what ensued was a 17 day hospital stay, 25 percent of his total weight lost, and he was not able to receive planned chemotherapy or radiation for cancer.

Scott & White has admitted to leaving the retractor in his abdomen, but they vehemently deny that it caused the need for the additional surgeries.

It was only after Crocker’s abdomen was swollen “like a pregnant woman” that Scott & White decided to perform a cat scan and x-ray to ascertain the cause.  Additionally, Crocker developed sepsis in his system, which is a condition in which the blood pressure drops and major organs and body systems stop working properly.

Scott & White stated that “the hospital offered Crocker a financial settlement before the case was filed”.  Crocker declined acceptance, and Scott & White increased the offer.

Crocker lamented:  “It’s an interesting situation.  It bothers me, the things that could have been said but weren’t.”

How is it possible that Johnson & Johnson sold a vaginal mesh implant for three years before the mesh was approved by the US Food & Drug Administration?  The answer is simple, though not necessarily safe:  through a process known as the “fast-track approval process”.

What is the “fast track approval process”?  It is a process whereby the FDA lets companies introduce products without human testing if the agency decides they’re similar to devices already for sale.  These unapproved devices are labeled as “predictive devices”.

The Gynecare Prolift Device was introduced by Johnson & Johnson in 2005.  It was hailed as being an “innovative and effective surgical option” for weakened pelvic muscles.  The USDA did not learn of the Prolift in 2007, when Johnson & Johnson sought approval for a related product  In 2008, the FDA finally cleared both devices.

Because of the lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson for the defective pelvic mesh, the unauthorized sales might have cost it more to resolve the lawsuits than the profits they made.

Johnson & Johnson has experienced recalls of artificial hip implants and over-the-counter drugs.  Additionally, three Johnson & Johnson units have pleaded guilty in the past two years to bribery or illegal marketing of drugs.

Researchers say that due to the “unequivocal evidence” that metal on metal hip replacements fail at a high rate, these type of replacements should be banned from the U.K.

The failure rate seems to be especially high for stemmed metal-on-metal (MOM) hip implants with larger head sizes and those implanted in women.  According to U.K. studies, those failure rates are up to four times higher than other types of hip implants.

Although the use of metal-on-metal hip implants has declined in the United Kingdom, they are still extensively used in the United States.  They accounted for 35 percent of hip replacements in 2009.

The ASR Hip System, manufactured by DePuy Orthopaedics, was recalled in 2010.

Dr. Sedrakyan of Cornell University, stated:  “In the case of the ASR and metal-on-metal implants, it took 45 years before evidence was accumulated and reported.  We are left with more than 500,000 patients with metal-on-metal prostheses in the United States and more than 40,000 in the United Kingdom are at elevated risk of device failure, which will inevitably result in the burden of further surgical treatment as well as billions of dollars it costs to taxpayers.”

If you have been injured by a defective hip implant, our injury lawyers can help you today.  If you have a case, you will be compensated for your medical expenses as well as your pain and suffering.  Don’t suffer alone.  We can help!

Recently, a CVS store in New Jersey mixed up fluoride tablets for children with tamoxifen, which is a breast cancer drug.  These prescriptions that were filled incorrectly could affect dozens of families.

According to data supplied by the National Cancer Institute, common side effects of tamoxifen include blood clots, stroke, uterine cancer, and cataracts.   It is currently unknown whether any children have suffered lasting damage due to the mixup.

Dr. Manny Alvarez, senior managing editor of FoxNews.com, said this is not the first time such a mix up has happened.  Alvarez stated:  “Many pharmacies today rely on the use of non-pharmacists to help fill prescriptions.  Pharmacies that are especially busy need to have a way of controlling quality.  They need to have a system of checks and balances put into place to prevent errors.  There’s also a lot of pill confusion nowadays.  You can rely on some brand name medications to be recognizable due to their unique colors and shapes.  But now, with the explosion of generic drugs, a lot of them look very much alike, and you need to pay close attention.”

The world’s largest drugmaker, Pfizer, is recalling a batch of Prevnar pneumonia vaccine.  Those needles were filled with expired material.  The recall only affected one wholesaler.

Prevnar is a vaccine that fights pneumonia, meningitis, and other diseases related to pneumococcus bacteria.  It is predicted that this vaccine will become one of Pfizer’s biggest brands.

According to Pfizer, they “continuously monitor the safety of all medications and do not believe the recalled doses pose any health risks.”

Pfizer recently had to recall 1 million packages of birth control pills due to packaging errors.

A new study has found that elderly nursing home residents who take antipsychotic drugs for dementia have an increased risk of death.

The study, published in the journal BMJ, followed more than 75,000 nursing home residents with dementia, all of whom were 65 or older, and found that those taking Haldol and Risperdal had double the risk of death.  According to the result, the risk was the highest during the first 40 days of treatment.

According to epidemiologist Krista Huybrechts, the study “underscores the need to try alternative means of dealing with behavioral problems in older patients with dementia”.

Previous studies imply that up to 1/3 of nursing home patients are treated with antipsychotic medications, even though the drugs have a limited effectiveness in treating behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia.

Huybrechts stated:  “The types of behaviors that physicians are trying to target with these drugs are aggression, agitation, and delusions, which can make patients uncomfortable and lead to behaviors that are harmful to themselves and others.”