Texans and people across the nation go to a doctor when they need medical assistance with an illness, condition or injury. They do so in the belief that the medical professional will provide reasonable care and thee will not be a glaring incidence of medical malpractice in their treatment, procedure or providing medication. Unfortunately, it is growing common for there to be medical errors that can leave people with severe damage they would otherwise not have had. When this happens, the person who was injured has the right to seek compensation in a legal filing.
A woman who had gone to the doctor suffering from depression in 2014 was given a prescription. The drug she received was in the wrong dosage and no one caught the error. She took the pills for two weeks without a problem before she began suffering from side effects. She had blisters on her entire body and said it felt as if she suffered a burn injury. When she went to the doctor, she received a diagnosis of Stevens Johnson Syndrome – a rare skin disorder that is often caused by a negative reaction to medication or a wrong dosage.
With this disease, the body essentially melts from the inside out. She has scars and burns on her skin; she is losing her ability to see; and she has lost her fingernails which will never regrow. The woman was in a medically-induced coma as her skin peeled off. The disease has no cure and she could suffer from it again.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, this is a problem that is growing in frequency. The FDA says that mistakes rose by 462 percent from 2010 to 2016. The FDA’s adverse reporting system has a database that records any medication mistake about which they receive information. The FDA believes that the increase is in part due to a better method of reporting these mistakes and more people getting prescriptions.
Regardless of why there are believed to be a greater number of mistakes reported, the reality is that people are being hurt with a worsened condition and even death because of these errors. This woman’s life will never be the same and she is declining in health after simply filling out a prescription to treat her depression. These errors can happen in any medical situation and hurt anyone. Those who have been harmed have the right to seek compensation with assistance from a lawyer experienced in medical errors. To file a lawsuit, that is the first call that a victim or the victim’s family should make.
Source: 11alive.com, “Woman’s skin ‘melts off’ after medication error”, Andy Pierrotti, Julie Wolf, May 9, 2017
