Chicago Medical Malpractice Attorney Blog

There is an old saying that hindsight is always twenty-twenty, i.e., we can always see something coming after the fact. When it comes to medical cases, it is often easy to see the signs and symptoms of a disease after it has run its course. However, diagnosing a disease in its early stages is not always easy; medicine is not a perfect science and doctors can't always diagnose the problem. Therefore, in order to prove that a doctor negligently failed to diagnose a disease, a patient needs to prove that the doctor should have been able to diagnose the problem, but chose not to.

In the Illinois medical malpractice lawsuit of Zachary Monahan v. Joseph Giordano, D.O., Edward Health Services d/b/a Edward Medical Group, Case No. 07 L 563 (Will County), the plaintiff alleged that his doctor chose not to diagnose his heart disease. However, the WIll County jury disagreed and found the doctor not guilty.

Zachary Monahan had presented to Dr. Giordano, his primary care physician, for several office visits between April and May 2001. During the course of those visits, Monahan continued to complain of a persistent fever, night sweats, and muscle aches. While Dr. Giordano conducted several tests during that time, it was not until Monahan's final office visit on May 12, 2001 that Dr. Giordano chose to order a blood culture.

The blood culture results showed that Monahan had a blood-born infection. Due to the serious nature of these results Monahan was immediately notified and admitted to Edward Hospital to begin intravenous antibiotics. The cause of his infection was then diagnosed as bacterial endocarditis, an infection of the lining within the heart's chambers.

Continue reading "Jury Verdict for Doctor, Plaintiff Fails to Prove Misdiagnosed Heart Infection - Monahan v. Dr. Joseph Giordano" »

In medical malpractice lawsuits, there is sometimes a thin line between what constitutes negligence and what does not. Take for example the Cook County lawsuit of Jennifer Irwin v. Alan B. Loren, M.D. and Daniel R. Conway, M.D., Advanced Surgical Associates, S.C., 08 L 2760. The defendant doctors committed a surgical error while removing the plaintiff's gallbladder; however, the jury found the doctors were not guilty of medical negligence.

The surgery at issue in Irwin took place at Northwest Community Hospital in March 2006. The 43 year-old plaintiff was scheduled to have her gallbladder removed in a laparoscopic cholecystectomy procedure performed by Dr. Alan Loren. Performing a surgery laparoscopically means that the surgeon relies on a camera to see inside the body's internal structures. Doing so allows the surgeon to make a much smaller incision and drastically decrease recovery time. However, this also means that the surgeon is not directly looking at the relevant organs and needs to correctly interpret what is seen on the camera.

Unfortunately, in Ms. Irwin's case, Dr. Loren did not correctly interpret the camera's images, at least not at first. Dr. Loren initially misidentified Irwin's common bile duct as the cystic duct. As a result of this misidentification, Dr. Loren incorrectly clamped the common bile duct with surgical clips and cut it. The common bile duct is responsible for carrying bile from the liver and gallbladder into the upper part of the small intestine and is an important component of the digestion process.

Continue reading "Cook County Surgeons Cut Common BIle Duct During Surgery, But Jury Finds for Defendants - Irwin v. Alan Loren, M.D." »

The First District Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed a not guilty jury verdict in the medical malpractice lawsuit of Raven Taylor v. The County of Cook, et al., No. 1-09-3085. While the plaintiff appealed the verdict on several counts, perhaps the most significant of the appellate court's rulings was in regards to the content of an expert's testimony. While Taylor's counsel argued that a medical expert could not testify regarding a medical treatment if he did not use it in his own practice, the appellate court found otherwise. It held that a medical expert could offer opinions about a medical treatment even if he used a different treatment in his own practice.

Taylor arose out of medical treatment Raven Taylor received at Cook County Hospital after experiencing migraines, joint stiffness and pain, and loss of her peripheral vision. While Taylor also received treatment for these various symptoms at Oak Forest Hospital, it was the treatment plan developed at Cook County Hospital that was the subject of the medical malpractice lawsuit. The Cook County Hospital staff suspected that Taylor's symptoms were being caused by polymyositis, an inflammatory muscular disease that can eventually lead to muscular problems. While polymyositis generally worsens muscle function slowly, in some cases it can progress rapidly and even lead to permanent disabilities.

Taylor unfortunately had the quick acting form of polymyositis and was in fact left with permanent disabilities. Her attorney and medical experts contended that her poor outcome was due to the fact that the physicians at Cook County Hospital were not aggressive enough in diagnosing and treating Taylor's severe case of polymyositis. However, the defendants' medical experts testified that while the doctors could have employed alternate treatment plans, that their actions were still within the acceptable standard of care. It was this testimony that was the subject of the appellate court's case review.

Continue reading "Illinois Appellate Court Allows Expert Testimony Regarding Different Treatment Plans - Taylor v. County of Cook" »

The Illinois Appellate Court has found that a medical expert in a medical malpractice case may be impeached with the use of the physician’s §2-622 (Illinois Code of Civil Procedure) report as a prior inconsistent statement. This issue before the court was one of first impression in the state and was decided upon in Iaccino v. Anderson, No. 1-07-0207.

In the Iaccino birth injury lawsuit, the plaintiff's attorneys alleged that the defendant doctors and hospital were responsible for the brain damage that the minor plaintiff, Jonathan Iaccino, suffered as a result of oxygen deprivation during his birth. The plaintiff's attorneys alleged that the defendants' medical negligent occurred as a result of their failure to monitor Jonathan's fetal heart rate and their lack of response to the hyperstimulation of the uterus during his labor and delivery.

Gary Blake, M.D. provided a Illinois Code of Civil Procedure §2-622 affidavit as one of the plaintiff's medical experts in Iaccino. When Dr. Blake signed the §2-622 report he stated that the decelerations recorded on a fetal-monitor strip were “variable decelerations.” However, at the trial, Dr. Blake testified that these strips showed “late decelerations” or “variable decelerations with a late component.”

Continue reading "Impeachment of Medical Expert for Prior Inconsistent Statement in Section 2-622 Report Allowed By Illinois Appellate Court - Iaccino v. Anderson" »

A Chicago medical malpractice verdict was reversed after an Illinois appellate court found that the testimony of the defendant's cardiology expert had violated an agreed order. Luis San Roman, et al. v. Children's Heart Center, Ltd., d/b/a Rush's Children's Heart Center, et al., No. 1-09-1217, will be remanded to the trial court for a retrial that will exclude the defendant's cardiology expert's testimony.

The case involves allegations of surgical errors during a procedure performed on plaintiff Luis San Roman when he was a baby. Luis was born with cyanosis and was referred to as a "blue baby" because he was born with transposition of the aorta, a congenital heart condition that deprives the body of oxygen. In addition to his congenital heart disease, Luis also had a condition of narrowing of the pulmonary artery.

In order to correct his congenital heart defects, a heart procedure was performed shortly after his birth. Chicago pediatric cardiologist Carlos Ruiz, recommended that Luis undergo a heart catheterization process which would insert a stent into Luis's left ventricle. This procedure was an alternative to open-heart surgery and was eventually performed at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center.

Continue reading "Medical Malpractice Expert Physician Found to Have Conflict of Interest: New Trial Ordered in San Roman v. Children's Heart Center" »