We represented the family of a young man who passed away long before his time because of the negligence of various doctors at a Chicago area hospital. The deceased was diagnosed with autoimmune hemolytic anemia (AIHA) when he was a teenager. AIHA occurs when your immune system mistakes red blood cells as unwanted substances. Four years after the diagnosis, he presented to the emergency room with fatigue and left upper quadrant pain. He was admitted to the hospital and in the first 24 hours, after been administered medication, his hemoglobin dropped by nearly half. He was seriously anemic.
The young man remained dangerously anemic during his entire admission at the hospital for the 5 days he was there before he passed. The standard of care for treating a patient in a hemolytic crisis requires aggressive blood product replacement therapy to increase his circulating hemoglobin while maintaining his coagulation status. This did not occur during the hospitalization and was a deviation from accepted standards of care by the medical team caring for him. During his entire stay, the 19-year-old received a woefully inadequate amount of packed red blood cells (PRBCs) given the destruction of red blood cells he was experiencing.
In light of his complaints and the diagnostic imaging which showed an enlarged spleen, the standard of care required that he be cared for in a facility where a splenectomy could be safely performed and chemotherapy administered. The hospital was no such a facility and the 19-year-old should have been emergently transferred to a facility which could meet his surgical and medical requirements. The failure to transfer him was a deviation from accepted standards of care by the care team.
Instead of correcting his critical anemia and effecting a transfer to a tertiary care center, the young man was allowed to deteriorate at the hospital. He passed away 5 days after his presentation to the hospital from hemolytic anemia.
The $3,800,000.00 settlement was reached approximately one week before the trial dare. Justice was delivered to the family after years of grueling litigation and several mediation sessions.
