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Failure to diagnose meningitis is becoming a leading cause of medical malpractice cases. In a nutshell, meningitis is an infection of the fluid of a person’s spinal cord and the fluid that surrounds the brain. The disease is usually caused by a viral or bacterial infection. Bacterial meningitis is the far more serious of the two, and may result in brain damage, hearing loss, learning disability, or even death.
Early diagnosis and identifying the specific type of bacteria that caused the meningitis can be significant because antibiotics can prevent some types from spreading and infecting other people.
Meningitis seems to show up significantly in college students. Students may be at greater risk due to crowded living conditions such as dormitories, sharing utensils, active or passive smoking, and irregular sleeping patterns. Other high-risk groups include infants and young children, refugees, and military personnel.
Meningitis is often misdiagnosed as something less serious because early symptoms are similar to the flu. Sadly, most of the fatalities associated with meningitis occur because of failure to diagnose the disease early enough. Please contact us if you have suffered a loss due to the misdiagnosis of meningitis.
Every TBI is one-of-a-kind. Medical professionals can’t just swing into a routine sequence of procedures as they might be able to do with a simple arm or leg fracture.
The first problem arises with diagnosis because the injury may not be visible on any of our current imaging devices (CT scans, MRIs, EEGs, X-rays etc.) Further, the effects of the injury will be unique to that person, so making the connection between injury and effect is not straightforward. And besides physical impairment, a TBI can affect the personality, but how can we quantify or pinpoint those effects when human personality is so complex and elusive, and the pre-TBI personality was probably never tested anyway?
From the legal perspective, problems arise when the statute of limitations is running, but the TBI effects are not immediately obvious. Some TBIs are not diagnosed for months, and it isn’t always clear whether the injury results will be permanent or will resolve by themselves. How does the attorney know when the injured person has reached a “medical end-result”?
Many TBIs happen in auto accidents. Did the person also have other injuries? If so, what consequences can be traced to the head or brain injury, and what can be traced to perhaps a spinal or neck injury? A TBI lawyer gathering information in cases like this needs much time to put all the facts together and determine what can be included in a valid legal claim.
So if you or a loved one has sustained a TBI, please contact us as soon as you possibly can, even if you aren’t sure of exactly what the medical situation is. We personal injury lawyers need all the time we can get to build your case.
When a baby cries on and on, we don’t necessarily know why. Sometimes the person caring for that baby becomes exasperated and angry and shakes the baby too hard, trying to make it be quiet. This can cause Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). A young baby’s neck muscles are not strong yet and give little support to the head. So the head flops about violently. The baby’s brain is knocked against the skull, breaking tiny blood vessels, tearing nerves, and bruising the brain tissue.
The baby may indeed stop crying, but not for a good reason. Brain injury may render it unconscious, and the injury could cause permanent impairment to the baby’s development, and even death. If the child survives, it may have hearing loss, seizures, impaired intellect, speech problems, learning problems, or blindness, just to give a few examples.
If your baby was in the care of somebody who inflicted TBI by shaking it too hard, you may never know. You may wonder what’s causing the child’s personality troubles and learning difficulties. Be very careful whose care you leave your baby in. Contact us if you worry about your baby, and whether it might have SBS. We can start investigating.
There’s no busier place on earth than a hospital emergency room. It’s not surprising if people make mistakes when they never know what appalling injury is going to be rushed in, and when they have no control over the numbers of patients needing their attention. But even in these high-speed and potentially confusing conditions, medical personnel are still legally responsible for their actions. Even when doctor and nurses are exhausted and sleepy, they must still adhere to the expected standards of care. Some of the more common emergency room errors are: - Failure to provide timely care
- Unnecessary surgical procedures (e.g. performed on the wrong person)
Don’t delay in consulting with us if you suspect an emergency room error was made in your case. A lot of fact-finding will have to be done, with medical experts studying the records and deposing health care professionals. It won’t cost you anything up front however, as we always work on a contingency basis.
If you have questions or comments please contact us.
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