Personal Injury Law

Another Medical Malpractice Lawsuit Filed For Unnecessary Heart Stent Implants

By Steven M. Levin and John J. Perconti

Pittsburgh Live reported yesterday on a medical malpractice lawsuit alleging a physician performed a string of dangerous and unnecessary medical procedures.

The suit alleges that a physician knowingly had a heart stent implanted into a patient who didn?t actually need it. A stent is a wire device, mesh-like in appearance, which is put into an artery to ensure it remains open. This is intended to allow blood flow to continue through a heart.

The stents costs patients $10,000 or more, require risky surgery, and place patients at increased risk for a variety of other problems. The doctor is this case was caught implanting hundreds unnecessarily, but experts believe that wasteful stent procedures are a nationwide problem. For those reasons, it is obviously not an operation that a patient would undergo unless medically necessary.

This is the eighth medical malpractice lawsuit that has been filed by patient against the Excela Health Westmoreland Hospital. The hospital has acknowledged that many patients may have been given the implant without reason. The facility sent letter to 141 patients warning them of the problem.

Full post as published by Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog on March 18, 2011 (boomark / email).