Cardiac Surgery in Palm Beach County, Florida Causes Death of
The couple in this Florida medical malpractice case had been happily married for almost 23 years. She was a hairdresser who was very active and athletic and had just been certified as a personal trainer. He worked for an aerospace firm in Delray Beach, Florida and life was good.
Our victim in this case was only 48 years old and had a heart valve problem that had been watched over the years. She had been told that someday she would have to have something done about it.
One morning over the weekend she noted she woke up short of breath with wheezing. She would have to sit up to feel better. She stated she did not have any chest pain or
lightheadedness. The first of the week she went in to see her cardiologist and it was his feeling that she experienced these complaints over the weekend due to salt and volume overload which was all secondary to significant underlying valve or heart disease. He felt that she was more likely than not approaching the need for valve replacement surgery and scheduled her for an echocardiogram as soon as possible.
After the echocardiogram was done, the results showed that she was in need of a cardiac catheterization, which was also done, and showed that she had mitral valve and aortic valve problems, along with two coronary arteries that needed to be bypassed.
She went into the hospital and was in surgery for nine hours. The aortic and mitral valves were replaced and two bypass graphs were done.
Post-operatively she did well; in fact, she was even sitting up in the chair the next morning in ICU. Two or three days later she was moved to her room and most of the time she wanted to sit up.
Less than a week after her surgery, the victim in this case was complaining of shortness of breath. She was given medication by the nurse, but nothing further was done. The patient kept complaining to the nurses and the attending cardiothoracic surgeon and early the next morning she called her husband at home saying something was terribly wrong, please come immediately.
Her husband left home immediately and when he got to the hospital, his wife was in the Intensive Care Unit on a respirator. Later that afternoon, her heart rate went from 110 down to 80, to 60 and down to 20 before they called a code. The husband heard that they opened her chest and got her heart going and then she was taken back to the operating room. He was told that she was bleeding where the temporary pacemaker wires were in place and that they took out over two liters of blood from her chest.
A neurologist was called in and stated that she had two strokes because her brain was deprived of oxygen.
The husband was understandably devastated and felt that more should have been done to save his wife. He contacted Attorney Richard D. Schuler who investigated this case and retained an expert cardiologist to review the matter. The expert stated that the fatal neurologic damage our victim sustained as a result of cardiac tamponade and cardiac arrest was due to the fact that she was not taken back to the operating room within a reasonable period of time following the insertion of chest tubes wherein approximately 2,500 cc’s of blood was drained from her chest. She continued to drain blood over a period of several hours before she was taken back to the operating room for repair of the arterial bleeder. The resulting tamponade deprived her brain of oxygen and ultimately caused her death.
The first trial of this matter ended in a mistrial. After two days of trial many months later, the defendants offered to sett for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The husband, clearly distraught throughout these proceedings, insisted on accepting their offer so that he would not have to endure the remainder of the trial. Mr. Schuler, although knowing that this case had the potential to result in a multi-million dollar verdict, realized the client was having a very difficult time holding himself together during the first portion of the trial, so he acquiesced to the client’s wishes and settled this case for the settlement amount offered.
Sadly, the husband in this case died approximately four months later himself. Mr. Schuler stated that he felt it was clearly from the broken heart he suffered as a result of the death of his wife who was the love of his life.
