The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched a formal investigation in late April into the possible HIV exposure of workers at an Arizona-based organ donation center. The employees may also have been subjected to other blood-borne pathogens, such as hepatitis C (HCV),... Read More

On April 23, 2014, a safety communication was issued by the FDA regarding potential dangers with epidural injections of corticosteroids. Commonly used to relieve chronic pain and inflammation, injectable corticosteroids include hydrocortisone, triamcinolone, methylprednisolone, betamethasone, and dexamethasone. Health regulators caution that rare but very serious... Read More

Five children’s hospital deaths that took place between 2008 and 2009 in New Orleans have now been linked to contaminated linens by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The agency has found that hospital linens were contaminated by Rizopus delemar, a flesh-eating fungus... Read More

On April 8, 2014, a Chicago plaintiff filed a stillbirth malpractice lawsuit against the U.S. attorney general, asking for more than $75,000 in damages in the death of her infant. The central argument is that the defendant failed to deliver the plaintiff’s baby in a... Read More

A Massachusetts hospital has agreed to pay $4.5 million in a settlement involving the death of a 62-year-old woman. Massachusetts General Hospital was accused of delaying measures that may have saved the woman’s life. The settlement came after two weeks of trial between the hospital... Read More

Emerging research conducted by personnel at Veterans Affairs in Texas suggests that diagnostic errors affect at least 1 in 20 U.S. adults. The results, which were published in the April 17 online edition of BMJ Quality & Safety, highlight the prevalence of diagnosis mistakes in... Read More

Physicians continue to prescribe codeine to children despite repeated warnings that the drug has potentially lethal side effects, according to a new study. Research published in the April 2014 edition of Pediatrics found that emergency room doctors prescribed codeine to over 544,000 children in 2010. ... Read More

A jury has awarded an upstate New York man $4 million in a medical misdiagnosis lawsuit stemming from an erroneous myasthenia gravis diagnosis made in 2004, according the the New York Daily News. 42-year-old plaintiff Robert Wyble alleged that he suffered several years of painful,... Read More