Anesthesia Injuries

Anesthesia is one of medicine’s specialties that allows little room for error. Anesthesia accidents during surgery can have catastrophic, even fatal, consequences. The anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetist is a vital part of the operating team. Like anyone else, they can make mistakes. But, there is little room for error in this team member’s work. A small mistake in anesthesia can have major effects on a patient’s health and life.

The consequences of improper administration of anesthesia, poor or absent patient instructions, monitoring of the patient during surgery or failed equipment or devices could be grounds for medical malpractice.

Anesthesia Injuries

Injuries caused by anesthesia errors can include:

  • Stroke
  • Heart attack
  • Paralysis
  • Birth defects
  • Brain injury
  • Nerve damage
  • Spinal cord injury
  • Coma
  • Wrongful Death
  • Being awake but unable to move or communicate during surgery

Anesthesia Errors

Some usual errors leading to anesthesia injury are:

  • Drug-anesthetic interaction
  • Too little anesthesia
  • Too much anesthesia
  • Failure to properly monitor patient’s oxygen during surgery
  • Improper labels on products
  • Defective devices used to administer or monitor the anesthetic
  • Giving a patient an anesthetic to which he or she is allergic
  • Delay of proper intubation
  • Failure to perform proper resuscitation

Various Types of Anesthesia

Anesthetics may be given by administration through an endotracheal tube, may be delivered locally, or may be given by epidural administration in the spine. Each procedure has its own possibilities for mistakes.

Not only is failure to properly monitor a patient during anesthesia a problem, the failure to quickly recognize and correct a mistake is another common fault of the anesthesiologist and surgical team.

Talk to a Connecticut Medical Malpractice Lawyer

If you or a loved one has experienced problems as a result of improperly performed anesthesia, the lawyers at The Berkowitz Law Firm are ready to help you recover the damages you deserve. To contact an anesthesia error lawyer, please the call the Berkowitz Law Firm at (866) 314-9352 or fill out out contact form and we will respond quickly.

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  • $6,100,000.00 settlement against a hospital and two physicians on behalf of a client who sustained permanent paralysis following the administration of anesthesia and prior to undergoing an anterior cervical discectomy.
  • $4,750,000.00 medical malpractice award on behalf of a child who sustained brain damage as a result of a hospital's negligent airway management.
  • $4,000,000.00 medical malpractice verdict against a gynecologist who caused the plaintiff to undergo a hysterectomy following a negligent surgical procedure and destroyed her ability to bear children.
  • $3,000,000.00 medical malpractice recovery against an anesthesiologist whose negligent administration of spinal anesthesia left an infant plaintiff profoundly brain damaged.
  • $3,000,000.00 medical malpractice settlement on behalf of a brain damaged newborn against a hospital as a result of the hospital's failure to timely deliver said newborn despite signs and symptoms of fetal distress.
  • $2,600,000.00 wrongful death verdict against a family practitioner and a urologist whose failure to timely diagnose prostate cancer led to the plaintiff's death.
  • $2,500,000.00 settlement against a radiologist for his failure to timely diagnose the plaintiff's spinal tumor which progressed to metastatic late stage cancer.
  • $2,450,000.00 total award against a hospital for its failure to properly restrain a hospital psychiatric patient who jumped out of a hospital window and fell three stories sustaining a permanent brain injury.
  • $2,300,000.00 medical malpractice settlement against a hospital following its failure to diagnose a bacterial infection causing a child to go into respiratory arrest and without oxygen for 20 minutes leading to the child's brain damage.

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