Medical advice, my wife went to the ER after a car accident. she had big cut on her elbow.?

Medical advice, my wife went to the ER after a car accident. she had big cut on her elbow.?


The ER doctor just sewed her up and sent us home. Two days later she got staff infection and was rushed into surgery. What was reveled was she had glass and debre still in her arm. And on top of that he missed all the internal damage tend ens, muscle and more. any way after three surgery's they are awaiting for infection to clear up to repair damage. so i guess what im asking is the doctor at fault. she almost lost her arm and know has to have more surgery's to repair elbowMedical advice, my wife went to the ER after a car accident. she had big cut on her elbow.?
There's no simple yes or no answer, but it's worth further investigation. Standard of care is to cleanse the wound, explore for foreign material, and close if the judgment of the treating physician is that it's clean enough. X-rays may also have been indicated. The exam should have included checking for tendon damage.


If it was apparent that the wound was heavily contaminated, it should have been left open, and delayed closure planned.


That said, it's also quite possible the appropriate exam and x-rays were done, and the general debris and glass in particular missed. Most debris and a good deal of glass won't show on x-ray. That would put it in the category of ';honest mistake'; rather than malpractice. A good tenth of wounds do get a staph infection even when everything's done perfectly, so it's the missed contaminants and the missed tendon injuries that are the contentious points.


Other factors may influence your decision, but on the basis of what you've presented, it would be appropriate to go through the legal discovery process and then decide whether to continue with a suit. Most hospitals and doctors are required by their insurance carriers to ';lawyer up'; in such circumstances, which is unfortunate; a few progressive hospitals are now letting you talk with the treating doctor, and allowing him to explain and if warranted apologize.Medical advice, my wife went to the ER after a car accident. she had big cut on her elbow.?
lawsuit waiting to happen


if you are kind, and insurance covers the followup care, repair etc


then let it go


if you have no wish to be kind, or have unpaid bills, you will win the suit


it will be probably settled out of court, as the insurance company will know the situation


expect the lawyers to take a very large percentage


this is the most common malpractice suit in ER work (or was 5 yrs ago) (';retained foreign body';)
The doctor didn't perform a thorough examination of the problem. Perhaps you can request an investigation into the matter.
Crap yeah, go for it!!! OMgoodness, I hope your wife alot better. Just start writing everything now out--all details so you won't forget anything.
emergency rooms suck my little boy was 6 years old vomiting and diarrhea with bloody stool and they tried to tel me nothing was wrong but viral infection and the bloody stool was supposedly checked and it was nothing to be alarmed he continued the same for 2 days i took him to a regular doctor and they did a stool sample and he had two different forborne illnesses shigella and salmonella poising


the doctor told me one more day of not being treated he would have died i could do nothing about it i still had to pay the er for almost killing my son health care should not be so nonchalant we need better training not these online or 8 week courses it is ridiculous the standards we now settle for in the health care industry if we wanted to create jobs and fill them in cases of someones life we should have better standards. i believe it is just luck if you end up with an er doctor you can trust they are usually so overworked that they can't give you the treatment they need to. i think we should have a lot more doctors and they should be evaluated on a regular basis it is our lives they hold in there hands


yes the answer to your question is it is the doctor's fault proving it may cost you more than the surgery to repair it i am sorry this happened to you.
It sounds more like you are asking for legal advice rather than medical advice.





It depends on the history the doctor was given. Did he know how she got cut, that there would be glass and debris there? Did he violate the standard of care? The question is also was there permanent damage because of the delay? The torn tendons and such were already torn by the accident. So the question is how much damage did the staph infection do.





As far as whether you have a lawsuit, it depends on what difference the failure made and if he violated the standard of care. In some states, like Washington, you have to have a permanent impairment because of the malpractice. A few days of pain or a big scar doesn't count.





You should file a formal complaint with the hospital so they can investigate what happened. And remember there are time limits for lawsuits, so if it is determined that there is significant permanent damage because of the doctor's acts, you need to act quickly.





Despite what the myths the medical profession likes to put out there, there aren't a lot of attorneys who do medical malpractice and those that do are very selective about their cases because it's very expensive to hire experts to even look at the records, much less have them come to court.
I think I would call that malpractice. I had a very similar accident. I was 'broadsided' by another car. The driver's side window was closed and I had my elbow resting on the windowsill, and my elbow went through the window. Actually I broke my arm, but they took xrays of my entire body to see what damage they might have missed. There were little pieces of glass in my arm and they had to be cleaned out, and they also gave me a ton of antibiotics intravenously.





I think we use lawsuits too freely in this country, that people who have a claim against a doctor think they have won the lottery. But in this case, I think you have a case.