January 24, 2019

Question

My father had resection with revision stablize fusion C2 T2 (tumor in spinalcord) on Friday jan 18th. Dr. said the surgery went well. I saw him Saturday and he was responding normally but with alot of pain. Monday I went to see him only to find out he's been admitted to the ICU Sunday night and NO ONE contacted me. They said he s confused and stop responding and then a ct scan was done showing bleeding in the middle of brain. He never open back his eyes since Sunday and now he's acoma and has stable intracranial hemorrhage which the doctor said is rear and they haven't seen this in 7 years which leaves me to believe they have no experience to deal with this situation. His ct scan are performed every 6 to 12 hrs and shows swelling but the bleeding stopped but no mental response only react to inflict pain from nurse to see his limbs move. The last option was told they need to remove back of skull to relieve pressure from brain which is more risky and I don't think these surgeons are experienced enough to do it. Something went wrong and I believe the hospital is at fault and reacted too slow. Now the family are devastated and feel uncertain about the doctors.

Answer

Intracranial hemorrhage is a serious and rare complication of this type of surgery. It may or may not have been due to physician error. It's unfortunate that communication from the hospital staff is unsatisfactory, but transfers from the ICU to another hospital are difficult to obtain, because of the risk involved for the patient. That shouldn't stop you from requesting it, if you have lost confidence in the ICU team. You need to ask the surgeon why this happened, and what his chances are. Without seeing the patient's chart, no attorney on here can tell you why this happened. Since this is an ongoing situation, do not threaten legal action, but consider speaking to a malpractice attorney when things quiet down. You don't say what hospital he is in, but if it's a City hospital, and the family has a claim, it needs to be filed within 90 days.


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