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Murrieta Anesthesia Mistakes Attorney

If you have had a medical or dental procedure more complex than filling a superficial cavity, you have probably undergone treatment with some kind of anesthesia. For example, you might have had local anesthesia when a dentist removed a carious lesion from your tooth and placed a filling or a doctor stitched a wound. Even with more complex procedures, the patient might be awake even though part of their body is anesthetized. If you gave birth by Caesarean section, you were awake to hear your baby’s first cries and to see the nurses cleaning and weighing the baby before handing him to you for his first cuddle, even though you had very little feeling in your lower body, so you could not feel the surgical incision or the stitches. In these types of anesthesia, as in general anesthesia where you are so heavily sedated that you have no memory of the procedure, the doses must be carefully controlled; the doctors and nurses must give just enough medication so that you do not feel pain during the procedure, but the dose must be low enough that, almost immediately after the procedure finishes, you wake up or the feeling begins to return to the affected parts of your body. Patients can suffer serious complications, including permanent injury or death, if the healthcare professionals administering or monitoring your anesthesia make an error. Contact the Murrietamedical malpractice lawyers at Gibbs & Fuerst if you suffered preventable complications because of an anesthesiologist’s error.

What Can Go Wrong With Anesthesia?

Most people experience no adverse effects at all after anesthesia, or only minor and transient ones, such as drowsiness or nausea, that resolve after a day or so. When a patient is under general anesthesia, the anesthesiologist and other health professionals constantly monitor the medication doses and adjust them if necessary, so that the patient’s oxygen saturation, breathing rate, body temperature, and heart rate stay within safe levels.

Anesthesia errors can lead to respiratory depression or insufficient oxygen to the patient’s brain. Likewise, malignant hyperthermia, in which a patient’s body temperature rises rapidly and can only be brought down to safe levels through the prompt administration of certain drugs, is also a possible complication of anesthesia. Hospitals and outpatient clinics that perform surgery must have the equipment to perform the necessary interventions if patients suffer complications from anesthesia. Patients under anesthesia require constant monitoring, and the standard of care dictates that a certain number of trained personnel be nearby at all times.

Medical Malpractice Lawsuits Related to Errors by Anesthesiologists

When you file a medical malpractice lawsuit, you must show that the doctor breached the standard of care, instead of simply that the patient suffered an adverse outcome despite the doctor acting reasonably. You and I have never administered anesthesia and do not know what constitutes a reasonable response to unexpected changes in the condition of an anesthetized patient. To build your case, your medical malpractice lawyer will need expert testimony from anesthesiologists about which warning signs should be obvious to someone licensed to administer anesthesia and what the standard of care requires anesthesiologists to do in situations like the one where you suffered preventable complications.

Contact The Murrieta Anesthesia Mistakes Attorneys

If you or a family member were seriously injured because of an error by an anesthesiologist or other medical professional, contact theMurrieta medical malpractice lawyers at Gibbs & Fuerstonline or call 951-816-3435 today.