Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Would you like to learn how a benign brain tumor caused a woman to lose eyesight in one
eye? Come join me as I share with you this fascinating story. Hi. I’m Gerry Oginski.
I’m a New York medical malpractice and personal injury trial attorney practicing law here
in the state of New York. The woman worked as a home health aide. She was on the way
to take her client (one of the patient’s she was caring for) to the doctor’s office.
They were in a van. And on the way to the doctor’s office, the van happened to get
into a car crash. Ironically, this crash happened right in front of a hospital emergency room
here in New York. So they took both my client and her patient into the emergency room. Now
my client hit her head during the course of the accident, so they did a full head workup.
They gave her x-rays of her head and they also gave her a CAT scan of the head. A few
hours later, the emergency room doctor comes out tells her she’s fine. She has no fractures,
no problem. And if she does have a problem, go back and follow up with your private doctor.
Well, that’s exactly what she did. She had no further problems for many months. And over
the course of those months, she noticed that the vision in one of her eyes started to get
out of focus but she didn’t think much of it. After about 9 months, my client finally
made an appointment with an eye doctor. And then when the eye doctor saw her, my client
told her everything that had happened from the car accident incident 9 months earlier
and that she had x-rays of her head and that she had a CAT scan of her head and she was
told everything was fine. But the eye doctor still wasn’t satisfied because there was
nothing to explain why only one of her eyes was having a vision problem and not the other.
So again, she ordered a repeat CAT scan. The CAT scan results shocked her. You know what
it showed? It showed that she had a massive tumor growing in her brain and that massive
tumor was putting tremendous pressure on the optic nerve, cutting off the blood supply.
And that’s exactly what was causing this patient’s problem. What ultimately happened
is by the time they finally diagnosed that this was a tumor putting pressure on the optic
nerve; my client had lost her vision. And despite the fact that they went in to remove
it surgically, the damage had already been done. Once the optic nerve is killed off and
there’s no further blood supply going there, you have permanent blindness. And the real
tragedy about this entire scenario is that this was totally preventable. Why? Because
the eye doctor went and got the original records, got the original CAT scan report and the CAT
scan films. And you know what it showed? It showed that the radiologist who interpreted
the original CAT scan from the emergency room read it correctly. He found a tumor sitting
in her brain. What was the problem? Nobody communicated that information to the patient
before she left the hospital. And even after she left the hospital, nobody bothered to
communicate the fact that she had this huge tumor growing in her brain. And if they had
told her about it, she would have had surgery to electively remove that tumor before it
did any damage whatsoever to the optic nerve. Bottom line is why do I share this information
with you? You know, I share it with you just to give you an insight and an understanding
into what was preventable; into what goes on into the litigation process here in cases
involving medical malpractice (or what’s commonly known as “medical negligence”
cases.) Chances are you’re watching this because you have questions or concerns about
your own particular matter. Well if your matter happened in New York and you have legal questions,
what I encourage you to do is pick up the phone and call me. I can answer your legal
questions. I do this every single day and I welcome your call. You can reach me at 516-487-8207
or by email at lawmed10@yahoo.com. I’m Gerry Oginski, here in New York. Thanks so for watching.