Parents seek answers for son's fatal post-operative reaction

For anyone that has anxiously waited in a hospital while a loved one underwent surgery, a prognosis of complications is usually not a good sign. Indeed, readers may assume that the best news is being told that a surgery went well.

Yet a medical malpractice attorney knows that the potential for medical mistakes or negligence doesn’t end when a patient leaves the operating table. Rather, the duty of care owed by doctors and hospital staff also extends to post-operative care. A patient must be monitored for potential reactions to the procedure or the medications he was administered. 

As a recent story illustrates, understanding the cause of a patient’s post-operative complications can be difficult. The patient was a teenager, ostensibly in good health, who had surgery for the removal of his wisdom teeth. The surgery appeared to go well, with just the expected side effects of pain and swelling.

The next 48 hours were not typical, however. Instead of getting better, the teen’s condition worsened. The deterioration may have been too quick to allow for admittance to the hospital, as the teen died at home. When rescue workers arrived, they were unable to revive him. His parents hope to get more answers from an autopsy.

Depending on the results of that inquiry, the teen’s parents may also benefit from a consultation with a medical malpractice attorney. An attorney knows that many hospitals have their own in-house legal teams. That presence cam make it difficult to get straight answers from hospital staff and doctors about what they might have done wrong. For an attorney with experience in investigating alleged medical negligence, however, such resistance may be sidestepped with other strategies. 

Source:  CBS Connecticut, “Teen Dies Days After Having Wisdom Teeth Removed,” Feb. 27, 2014