- Jurisdiction
- California
I am not sure if this is medical malpractice or equipment failure, so here we go. After two visits to the ER with leg pain, my husband went in for an angioplasty to check for blockage in his right leg. He had many prior angioplasty procedures and has never experienced any problem as a result. Thankfully, they did not find blockage in his right leg. He had a bypass in that leg previously. When they went to remove the sheath from his left side groin, they did see some plaque there, so, as I understand it, they removed that plaque. When they finally removed the sheath, if I understand it correctly, the tip of the sheath broke off in the vein. They had to do surgery to remove the tip from the vein. They repaired the vein and , if I understand correctly, pulled a piece of muscle from his hip to hold it in place. Before leaving the hospital, he developed an infection and started antibiotics. A couple of days after he returned home they called and changed the antibiotics. A couple of days later, he woke me at 5 AM and told me to call an ambulance. He began bleeding from the wound, and blood was literally pouring out. Our bed looked like a crime scene, covered with blood, as he evidently had been bleeding for some time, before he woke up to go to the bathroom. We put pressure on the wound, and the ambulance transported him to a local hospital, where they stopped the bleeding and made contact with his surgeon who is at a different hospital. I brought him home and no more incident until the next morning when he coughed after taking a sip of coffee and the bleeding started again. Once again, we called an ambulance and they stopped the bleeding and upon advice from his surgeon, they did an ultrasound of the area. They did not find anything and send him home. We called his surgeon the next morning, Monday, and she wold see him on Wednesday. She looked at the wound and decided that she should admit him again and take a look at the wound. From what I understand, when she got in there, she found that the infection had damaged the artery and it had to be replaced. The surgery left him with a large gaping hole in his groin. He was sent home with a wound vac and IV antibiotics that we administered at home for 6 weeks. Home health had to come in three times a week to take care of the wound vac and treat the pic line site. This ordeal began in December 2018 and he was not released from Home Health and his Doctor until late April. Basically, we lost nearly half of the year with all this, and the cost to our insurance is unbelievable. Thank goodness we have supplemental insurance that covered most of the cost of the medicine, as Medicare does not cover it. The medicine alone cost over $12,000.00 per week. What I am not sure of, did all this happen because the tip if the sheath broke off? Should we look at the manufacture for answers? Or is it medical negligence, something that could have been prevented by the person pulling the sheath after the procedure?
