According to a recent study, emergency room doctors are prescribing too many opioids to patients who suffer from migraine headaches. Migraine headaches account for the fifth biggest reason patients visit the emergency room.

Researchers from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center, The Bronx, analyzed data that was collected for the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. This data was gathered between the years of 1998 to 2010.

During that time period, millions of patients visited the ER because of migraine headaches. In 2010 alone, there were 1.2 million ER patients with complaints of severe headaches. In 1998, 51 percent of migraine headache patients were prescribed opioids by the attending ER physician for pain relief. In 2010, that number rose to 53 percent, despite study results over the past two decades that other drugs work much better at relieving migraine pain.

According to lead researcher Dr. Benjamin Friedman, frequent use of opioids to treat migraines should not be happening. “Opioids are not as good as other medications in the short-term and they may have long-term effects that are harmful to patients,” said Friedman. The study found that opioids are only necessary in approximately 5 percent of patients. Drugs such as triptan and ketorolac work better and quicker at relieving pain compared to opioids. Yet emergency room doctors prescribe these two drugs to only 10 percent of migraine sufferers.

There is also concern that opioids actually cause harm to a patient by making the migraines worse. Therefore, this then causes the patient to visit the emergency room more frequently. The researchers recommend an investigation be conducted to find out why ER physicians are prescribing such a high amount of opioids.

If you have been prescribed medication that has caused serious side-effects, or a medication has caused your condition to worsen, contact an experienced Westport medical malpractice attorney to find out what compensation you may be entitled to for pain and loss.

When people hear the term “black box” they generally think of the device that is used in airplane disasters which crash investigators retrieve in order to help determine what caused a plane to crash. A black box consists of a cockpit recorder and flight data recorder. However, one Toronto surgeon believes that operating rooms should also have their own black boxes.

Dr. Teodor Grantcharov, who works at St. Michael’s Hospital, has come up with a prototype black box and he has been utilizing it for all of his laparoscopic surgeries. In laparoscopic surgeries, doctors use small video cameras and surgical tools that are placed inside the body. They are considered “minimally invasive” compared to traditional surgeries. Dr. Grantcharov’s goal is to help minimize medical mistakes from occurring in laparoscopic surgeries. Several mistakes that may occur include perforations to the blood vessels, intestines or bowels.

The black box that Grancharov uses records all the conversations taking place in the operating room during surgery, as well as records the footage from the video camera. It also keeps track of decibel and temperature and records an entire view of the operating room.

Currently, when something goes wrong with a patient’s surgery, most hospitals have morbidity and mortality meetings which try to determine what happened based on the limited information they may available. But with the black box method, everything that occurred in the operating room can be viewed, much the same way professional athletes watch footage of games to see where certain plays worked and where they did not work.

Each one of Grancharov’s surgeries are watched by a peer review committee. He performs approximately six surgeries per week. “We define error as very, very minor deviation from the perfect course,” Grantcharov says. “People believe that surgeons are perfect and never make mistakes, and that’s not true, as long as there are humans there will always be mistakes. We have to be more transparent about our business.”

If you have had laparoscopic surgery that resulted in serious surgical errors or complications due to your doctor’s negligence, please contact an experienced Westport medical malpractice attorney to discuss any compensation you may be entitled to for pain and loss.

Headlines about surgical tools being left in a patient’s body, or babies born with birth defects due to a hospital’s negligence, are attention-grabbing. However, a quieter and perhaps more deadly type of malpractice is most common—misdiagnosis.

According to Fox News, a study examining “medical malpractice claims against primary care doctors in the United States, Australia, France, and Canada found that between 26 and 63 percent of claims were related to missed diagnoses.” It is important to note that malpractice claims are different than the actual number of incidents as claims are allegations brought against the doctor by the affected patient or bereaved family. According to Fox News, about two-thirds of medical malpractice claims filed in the United States are thrown out by a court and not awarded.

The most common outcome in a medical malpractice claim was death of the patient. Not surprisingly, a misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose cancer was the number one reason for the claim: specifically breast, colon, melanoma, and lung cancer. A failure to diagnose meningitis in children was high on the list, as was a failure to recognize a heart attack in adults. Though many of these claims are thrown out, by some estimates the number of such incidents could be much higher than the claims suggest. Many patients who experience adverse side effects do not recognize them as medical malpractice and do not file.

A doctor at the California-based malpractice insurer The Doctors Company told Fox that suits can help doctors recognize where diagnoses are being missed, and alert them to the possibility of atypical symptoms. Many claims were filed in recent years regarding cases of heart attacks in women. By studying these claims, doctors were able to learn more about how to detect the possibility of heart attacks in women, and share this information with other doctors. “Ultimately [the process of analyzing malpractice claims] can contribute to improving the quality of medical practice,” the doctor told Fox.

If you or someone you know has been negatively affected by a misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose in Connecticut, the most important step is to seek the counsel of a Westport medical malpractice attorney. Contact the law offices of Richard H. Raphael, Attorney at Law, for a free initial consultation today.