80 year old female with arteries clogged did not want open heart surgery and opted to have less invasive procedure with stints put in via way of the vein. Procedure went extremely well, female was up walking and eating and scheduled to be discharged at 11 a.m. the next morning. After dinner, Nurse came to gave patient two pills which she explained was to prevent patient from having a stroke. Approximately two hours later patient felt tired, laid on bed, started wheezing and daughter ran to nurses to advise that something was wrong. Medical personnel took patient out of room and did not appear again until approximately four hours later to inform family that they were doing a MRI. Medical staff did not circle back with an update until another fours hours later at which time the surgeons came to inform family that patient had three strokes. Family feels strongly about the two pills that were administered. One of the surgeons who performed the procedure was seasoned and the other one looked like a resident. Please advise.
Malpractice is care and treatment that falls below the standard of care and causes injury. The standard of care is basically the level at which the average, prudent provider in a given community would practice. It is how similarly qualified practitioners would have managed the patient's care under the same or similar circumstances. Injury typically must be severe or permanent in order for the claim to be economically feasible to pursue even if there is malpractice. These cases are very expensive and risky to pursue. Unless it appears there would be a meaningful economic recovery to the patient the cases are cost prohibitive to pursue. In order to find out if you were the victim of negligence, you need to retain a lawyer willing to investigate the claim. The lawyer will gather your medical records and have them reviewed by a medical expert who will be asked to offer an opinion as to whether 1. the care and treatment you received fell below the applicable standard of care and 2. caused an injury. There is no claim to pursue unless and until such an opinion is secured.
Without knowing what the pills were and if their administration was a departure from accepted practice, in a patient where strokes were foreseeable, no one can tell you if there is a case. Furthermore, the damages are limited to her pain and suffering which may limited.
The questions that an expert needs to answer are:
Was it a departure in the way you were treated and did that departure cause significant injuries?
To answer this they would need to review the medical records and imaging studies.
If the answers are yes you have the basis of a lawsuit. Speak to local malpractice counsel to arrange for such a review if damages warrant.
I'm going to speculate that the procedure you described is a 'TAVR' - transcatheter aortic valve replacement, for which stroke is a known risk - but to prepare for the operation, a patient needs to be weaned off any blood thinners they may already be taking, and this can expose them to the risk of stroke. It's a trade-off, since TAVR is done when a patient would usually (due to age or comorbidities) not survive open heart surgery. The pills given afterwards were probably blood thinners that were safe to dispense after the surgery. Unfortunately, no procedure is risk-free, and I assume a consent was signed (which typically lists stroke as a known risk). The patient has a right to a copy of her chart, so if you have further questions, your first step would be to get a copy of the chart and have it reviewed.
