September 30, 2015
Rapoport Weisberg & Sims P.C. has reached a $1 million settlement on behalf of a 50-year-old woman who sustained a compartment syndrome in her left arm after a successful surgery at a Chicago hospital. The patient underwent surgery to treat a brain aneurysm before it ruptured. After surgery was successfully completed, while the patient was recuperating, a hospital nurse removed an arterial line from the patient’s left wrist which resulted in an internal bleed developing. The internal bleed continued for over 12 hours, eventually leading to a compartment syndrome, before it was finally diagnosed and she was rushed into emergency surgery. The patient eventually underwent three surgeries to save her left arm, but she has been left with permanent pain and disability in her left arm and hand.
The trial team at Rapoport Weisberg & Sims P.C. consisted of David E. Rapoport and Joshua L. Weisberg. They were able to successfully argue that the nurse who removed the patient’s radial arterial line did so in a negligent manner which caused the internal bleeding to start, and this error was then compounded by the hospital’s nurses failing to properly assess the situation and communicate to the patient’s doctors about her condition over the next 12 hours. According to lead attorney David E. Rapoport, “a patient who comes into a hospital to fix one problem should not leave with a new problem. Our client had successful surgery and should have been able to go on with her life, but careless nursing mistakes have now caused her to live with pain and disability in her arm and hand. The hospital needed to be held accountable, and now it has been.”
