Hollywood Meets Medicine
December 31, 2014
Technology in medicine is developing rapidly. What was the stuff of science fiction just a few years ago is already becoming a reality.
Technology in medicine is developing rapidly. What was the stuff of science fiction just a few years ago is already becoming a reality.
A new stroke treatment recently studied in the Netherlands is giving the medical community hope that it will soon have another treatment for patients who suffer from ischemic strokes. The treatment involves threading a stent with a snare at the end up through an artery in the groin to grab and pull out the clot in the brain.
Blood-thinners are important medications to prevent the formations of clots that can harm and kill patients, but the use of these drugs must be weighed against the risks of dangerous bleeding that can occur while on the medications.
Technology has the potential to improve health care, but it also carries with it a number of risks to patient safety.
Some doctors, and many insurance companies, like to talk about "frivolous" malpractice cases, and the problem of paying money to plaintiffs who sometimes don’t even have a valid claim. The reality is that our judicial system has numerous safeguards in place to practically guarantee that a non-meritorious case will not be successful.
Modern medicine has solved many problems, but it hasn’t yet solved hospital-acquired infections. Unfortunately for people harmed by such infections, it is very difficult to bring a claim for injury.
Hand-offs – patient information communicated from one provider to another – are a source of many errors that lead to patient injury. A new study and associated solution is hoping to cut those errors and increase patient safety.
For attorneys representing victims of medical malpractice, it is a sad truth that jurors tend to want to find ways to blame the patient victim.
There are real and obvious hazards to patients of electronic health records (EHR).
A recent California lawsuit alleges that orthopedic surgeons used "knock-off" spine hardware in surgeries. Much of the hardware failed, causing patients serious medical issues, while the surgeons, clinics and machine shop fabricating the hardware apparently reaped thousands of dollars in profits from using the counterfeit products.
