Woman Sues Hospital Claiming Spinal Surgery Was Unnecessary | Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp

A woman from Texas (TX) has launched a lawsuit claiming she sustained severe infections and had to endure excruciating pain because of unnecessary surgery.

 
Janice McDaniel, and her husband, William, filed a lawsuit February 25, 2011, in Jefferson County District Court, Jefferson, Texas (TX), this month. She claimed none of the pain the woman experienced would have been necessary had her doctor properly treated her., the Southeast Texas Record is reporting.

The suit claims McDaniel was admitted to Memorial Hermann Baptist Beaumont Hospital on December 19, 2008. The doctor told her she had suffered a complete disk collapse of certain segments of her spine, according to the original complaint.

The doctor elected to undergo a multilevel lumbar fusion surgery with implantation of hardware — a surgery McDaniel alleges should not have been performed. Because of the unnecessary surgery, McDaniel had to undergo repeated hospitalizations and surgery because of infections that cropped up, the suit states.

One of the most common surgical errors is unnecessary surgery. Our medical malpractice experts recently noted unnecessary surgery accounts for 12,000 deaths a year. A staggering  90 percent of medical malpractice trials involved plaintiffs who suffered permanent injury or death, according to the Bureau of Justice.

Our attorneys are experts in spinal injuries. We have been involved in a number of cases where inappropriate, incorrect or unnecessary medication or treatment has been given. In a recent case a 61-year-old man in  good health who developed a swelling in his left ankle was given a prescription for Coumadin, a blood thinner. When the pharmacist filled the prescription, he was instructed by the pharmacist to take 25 mg. per day. Two days later, he suffered a massive rectal hemorrhage and required three hospitalizations to resolve the injury. The plaintiff was awarded $200,000.

DM