What Happened
Our firm successfully resolved a catastrophic medical malpractice case involving the failure to timely diagnose and treat cervical spinal cord compression (cervical myelopathy).
Our client initially sought medical care after a work injury causing arm pain and numbness. Over time, his symptoms rapidly worsened and progressed to numbness across his chest, pain and numbness in his foot and hand, and neurological symptoms consistent with spinal cord compression. Despite these red-flag signs, providers failed to recognize the emergency nature of his condition and failed to urgently refer him for neurosurgical evaluation and decompression surgery.
By the time emergency surgery was finally performed, the spinal cord damage had become permanent. Our client ultimately suffered an incomplete spinal cord injury with chronic neuropathic pain, impaired mobility, falls, bowel and bladder dysfunction, weakness in all extremities, and permanent disability requiring assistive devices and extensive rehabilitation.
The evidence showed that earlier diagnosis and emergency decompression surgery would more likely than not have significantly improved his neurological outcome and reduced the severity of his permanent injuries.
Practice Areas Involved
This result arose from the kind of care reviewed on these pages. If something similar happened in your family, they explain what the records are read for.