In June 2020, 54-year-old Joshua Hamby, husband and father, was brought to a hospital emergency room by his wife because he was suffering from very painful acute pancreatitis. His wife of ten years was unable to stay with him due to COVID-19 restrictions at that time.
The next day, the wife received a telephone call from the hospital, instructing her to return to the hospital at once: “I saw him unconscious, hooked up to a bunch of equipment and with nurses walking around and then I saw a physician who told me my husband had brain damage.” Joshua was removed from life support within a week.
The Florida medical malpractice wrongful death lawsuit alleged that the physician treating Joshua at the hospital failed to obtain a proper medical history from him before prescribing 27 doses of the very powerful narcotic Dilaudid over a period of 28 hours. Joshua’s medical history included sleep apnea, which is a red flag for patients given powerful narcotics that can suppress respiration.
The family’s Florida medical malpractice lawsuit further alleged that the treating physician failed to order proper monitoring of Joshua while he was in the hospital after surgery while he was being administered Dilaudid. The physician argued that he ordered that Joshua be placed on a floor where the nurses could monitor him.
The family’s Florida medical malpractice lawyer stated after the verdict, “He [the physician] never asked Josh if he had sleep apnea. And it’s very well known and accepted if you have a patient you’re going to give powerful narcotics to, you have to find out if they have sleep apnea. There was no doubt the care of treatment was below the standard of treatment and this family was irreparably damaged.”
The Florida wrongful death jury awarded $20 million to Joshua’s wife and their child after four hours of deliberations yet the wife stated after the verdict, “There is no money that could replace my husband. He was the love of my life. Way before we had a child.”
A published medical article from 2015 states, in part: “Opioids are widely used to manage postoperative pain. In patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), clinicians may hesitate to use opioids liberally for managing postoperative pain because of concerns about respiratory depression. Important components of OSA like sleep fragmentation and intermittent hypoxia may enhance pain behavior and also increase sensitivity to opioid analgesia.” The article mentions as a Key Point: “Opioids can exacerbate sleep-disordered breathing postoperatively and worsen hypoxemia.”
If you or a loved one have suffered serious harm (or worse) as a result of medical negligence in Florida or in another U.S. state, you should promptly find a Florida medical malpractice attorney, or a medical malpractice attorney in your state, who may investigate your medical malpractice claim for you and represent you or your loved one in a medical malpractice case, if appropriate.
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