• 14
  • February
    2012

Most Cleveland residents who have undergone a surgical procedure will tell you that it can be a nerve-racking experience. Lying in a hospital bed or gurney, having a nurse prepare you for surgery and hoping the operation will be a success is stressful, even when the procedure you require is relatively mild.

Patients going into surgery would like to believe that the physicians and medical staff performing the surgery are highly skilled and able to prevent basic accidents from occurring. But unfortunately, that is not always the case and patients sometimes become injured due to easily preventable errors.

An example of this is a woman who has filed a lawsuit against a physician who attempted to perform a pain-reduction procedure. According to the lawsuit, the procedure - an infection of steroids to treat severe back pain - never happened because after being injected with a sedative, the patient fell off the table she was lying on and landed on her head.

The incident caused several brain injury symptoms, including dizziness and headaches, as well as worsened back pain and pain in her right leg, the lawsuit says. She was also diagnosed with nausea, depression, anxiety and fatigue as a result of the accident.

The patient's lawsuit names the doctor who was to perform the steroid injection as a defendant, as well as the medical facility where the incident took place and other professionals who were involved in the procedure. She is seeking compensation for pain and suffering, medical expenses, loss of enjoyment of life and loss of consortium. The exact amount of damages she is seeking is not specified.

Source: The Louisiana Record, "Woman claims medical malpractice after falling off procedure table while sedated," Kyle Barnett, Feb. 7, 2012