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Nebraska Hospital Sued Over E coli Misdiagnosis

By Pritzker | Ruohonen

Doctors in Nebraska  misdiagnosed an elderly woman who was afflicted by E. coli O157:H7 and have refused to change the cause of death on her death certificate, according to a lawsuit filed by family members.

Nebraska state epidemiologist Dr. Tom Safranek told the Omaha World-Herald newspaper that he is certain 81-year-old Ruby Trautz was sickened in August 2006 from eating spinach that was contaminated with the same strain of  E. coli O157:H7 bacteria that poisoned more than 200 other Americans in 26 states. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also counted Trautz as a victim of that multi-state spinach E. coli outbreak, the newspaper reported.

Bringing the lawsuit against Creighton University Medical Center, the university and certain physicians are Trautz's daughter and son-in-law, Polly and Ken Costello of Bellevue, Neb. They  told the World-Herald they want the hospital to adopt a protocol under which any patient showing bloody diarrhea would automatically be tested for E. coli infection. 

The Costellos also want Creighton to produce an educational video about the importance of testing for E. coli . If those demands are met and Ms. Trautz's death certificate is corrected -- it now says she died of clostridium difficile infection -- the Costellos said they would consider dropping the suit.

"I don't think we're asking for a lot, but we are also pretty inflexible,'' Ken Costello told the World-Herald.

The university has said that Costello's lawsuit is without merit and that it will "vigorously'' defend itself.

Full post as published by Food Poisoning Law Blog on December 02, 2008 (boomark / email).