Atlanta Injury Lawyers Blog

A retired dentist, who earlier this year settled a wrongful death dental negligence lawsuit arising from the death of a teenager under his care, is being sued again by another patient.

A lawsuit filed in December accuses 81-year-old Henry Mazarow of dental negligence. The lawsuit has been filed by a woman, who says that she went to the dentist for treatment in December 2010. She suffered serious injuries, including seizures, neurological damage and other devastating injuries while undergoing treatment at the doctor's clinic. Some of her injuries were permanent. The lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $25,000.

It must seem like déjà vu for the 81-year-old Dr. Mazarow. In October, his insurer settled a dental wrongful death lawsuit with the family of a teenager who died while undergoing a dental procedure at his office. The parents of the 13-year-old girl had filed a lawsuit against him after their daughter died while under sedation during the surgery. The girl had visited the doctor to have 2 teeth removed, and was given a combination of sedatives. During the procedure, the girl collapsed, and was rushed to the hospital. She was immediately placed on a ventilator, but died a few days later. The cause of her death was ruled as diffuse hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy.

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Surprisingly, more than 1.5 million Americans are hurt annually as a direct result of medication mistakes. As healthcare professionals, pharmacists are responsible for counseling patients about their medications in addition to compounding and dispensing medications. And though pharmacists are well-trained individuals, most medication mistakes can only be attributed to human error.

Doctors, for example, are infamous for having illegible handwriting. And though a doctor may prescribe the right medication for a patient, the pharmacist may not be able to decipher it correctly. Sometimes a doctor’s office will place the prescription with the pharmacy via the telephone on behalf of the patient. Nonetheless, mistakes in communication can occur between the caller and the receiver.

Pharmacist negligence can also result when pharmacists or pharmacy technicians dispense the wrong medication, the incorrect dosage of medication, or place inaccurate instructions on the vial or container of the medication. Many of these mistakes happen when pharmacists or their technicians are inattentive to their work or simply succumb to the monotony of the work involved.

Here in Atlanta, we are currently experiencing a shortage of competent pharmacists. And while the available pharmacists are being overworked to compensate for this shortage, pharmacy technicians are being over used. Pharmacists are required to supervise technicians. However, a surprising number of medication mistakes are caused each year by a lack of proper supervision.

In addition, pharmacists must ensure that patients understand:

-what medication has been prescribed
-why it has been prescribed
-how it is to be taken
-any and all possible side effects associated with the medication.

Pharmacists must also discern possible drug interactions. For instance, if a patient currently takes a prescribed drug, introduction of another drug may conflict with the preceding prescription. Failure to detect drug interactions can have dire consequences to the safety and well being of the patient. For example, if a patient is taking coumadin (a blood thinner) and is subsequently prescribed many types of antibiotics, the antibiotics cause the coumadin to thin the blood too much--often resulting in serious bleed-related injuries or death.

Continue reading " Top Reasons for Atlanta Pharmacy Errors " »

The parents of a 17-year-old girl, who died while she was undergoing oral surgery, have filed a lawsuit against the oral surgeon and anesthesiologist involved in the procedure.

The death occurred in March this year, when 17-year-old Jennifer Jenny Michelle Olenick visited the dentist's office of Domenick Coletti for the surgery. According to the report by the chief medical examiner, she was first given a standard dose of anesthesia. However, the dose was insufficient to get her completely sedated. She was then administered an additional dose of anesthesia. This was also part of standard procedure.

However, when the procedure was underway, she began to experience bradycardia, a slowing down of her heart rhythm. This was followed by a drop in the oxygen saturation in her blood. She went into hypoxic arrest, and at this point, the doctors called in emergency personnel. Olenick was then rushed to the hospital, where she was in a coma for a few days. She died on April 6.

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Ventilator alarm fatigue, or overexposure to ventilator and cardiac monitor alarms which increases the risk of errors, is finally getting the attention it deserves. The ECRI Institute now ranks ventilator alarm-related hazards right at the top of its annual list of health technology hazards. New data by the Food and Drug Administration also suggests that the time is right for a spotlighting of this phenomenon. According to the agency, more than 800 ventilator alarm-related errors occur in 2010 alone.

A new analysis by the Boston Globe finds that over the past 6 years, more than 100 people have died from ventilator alarm-related errors. According to the analysis, most of these errors occurred due to nurses’ failure to respond to a beeping alarm, and not the result of defective alarms.

Over exposure to ventilator alarms is definitely a phenomenon that deserves attention. During any given working day in a hospital, nurses are exposed to hundreds of frequently beeping ventilator and monitor alarms. Many alarms sound an alert even for slight changes in measurements that may not be serious. When this happens, nurses get used to the sound of alarms, and begin neglecting alerts. In fact, as the Boston Globe analysis shows, most of the ventilator alarm-related errors were the result of failing to respond to an alert, and occurred when the alarms were not set properly.

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As an Atlanta personal injury lawyer, a large part of my legal practice is devoted to helping those injured by dental malpractice. Many of these injuries occur secondary to the placement of dental implants. Dental implants are preferred for tooth restoration over dental bridges because they are esthetically more appealing and have the functioning ability of real teeth. And though generally considered safe, the procedure does present some risk to the patient. Some reports indicate that as many as 13% of all implant procedures result in some type of nerve injury.

Serious nerve injuries often occur when dentists drill past the jawbone into the inferior alveolar nerve or actually position the implant itself on the nerve. The usual symptoms are numbness, severe pain, and/or discomfort in the patients mouth or face that was not felt prior to the placement of the implant. Therefore, proper location of the nerve prior to performing the procedure is necessary and required under the applicable standard of care.

The most commonly employed method used in finding the position of the nerve is a radiograph, but tomograph and computerized tomography is similarly used. According to the Journal of Implantology, correctly measuring the available bone or the simple use of a drill guard can preclude over penetration.

For well over 25 years, a safety zone of two millimeters has been prescribed between the drill depth for the implant and the jaw nerve beneath. When a patient is injured, ascertaining the cause of the problem will determine the necessary response. And a three dimensional cone beam (CBCT) x - ray can verify if the jaw nerve was reached during drilling.

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This dentist doesn't seem to be too keen on waiting till complaints against her evolve into a full-fledged dental malpractice lawsuit. According to a lawsuit that has been filed against Dr. Stacy Makhnevich, she attempted to prevent patients from commenting on her dental work online, and then retaliated against them when they did.

The lawsuit has been filed against the dentist who also happens to moonlight as a classical singer, by former patient Robert Lee. According to the lawsuit, he visited Dr. Makhnevich with a dental problem, and was surprised when she asked him to sign an agreement not to criticize her work online. The agreement called the Mutual Agreement to Maintain Privacy had to be signed before she agreed to work on his tooth.

Lee signed the agreement, and then went on the website Yelp to accuse her of shoddy work. According to his criticism posted on Yelp, she overcharged him by as much as $4,000. His exact comments were ‘Avoid at All Costs!.’ The dentist accused him of breaching their agreement, and retaliated by billing him $100 for every day that the negative comment on Yelp remained posted.

Continue reading " Dentist Sued for Trying to Silence Patience Criticism " »