Sommers Schwartz attorney Matthew Curtis filed a medical malpractice and wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of the estate of a 49-year-old Clinton Township man who died after his care team failed to diagnose and treat a fungal brain infection during a weeks-long hospitalization.
The decedent had undergone a kidney transplant in 2020, a procedure requiring ongoing immunosuppressive medications to prevent his body from rejecting the organ. Those medications left him immunocompromised, meaning that his immune system was deliberately suppressed. On May 29, 2024, he went to the emergency room reporting a headache that had persisted for three to four days, along with chest pain and blurry vision. He rated his head pain at 8 out of 10. He was admitted to the hospital.
In the weeks that followed, the decedent remained hospitalized with a worsening, severe, and unexplained headache. He was evaluated repeatedly by a neurologist and an infectious disease specialist on the care team. His pain did not respond to high-dose opioid medications, including intravenous narcotics. A brain MRI performed on June 12, 2024, did not explain the persistent headache. By June 16, he had begun to deteriorate neurologically. Through all of it, no one ordered a lumbar puncture (a spinal tap) to test the fluid surrounding his brain and spinal cord.
Cryptococcal meningitis is a life-threatening fungal infection of the brain and its surrounding membranes, caused by the naturally occurring fungus Cryptococcus. It is almost exclusively a disease of immunocompromised patients, people whose immune systems are weakened by HIV, cancer treatment, or, as here, medications taken to prevent organ rejection after a transplant. It is treatable with antifungal medications, but only if diagnosed in time. The standard diagnostic test is a lumbar puncture.
The complaint alleges that the combination of the decedent’s immunocompromised status, a persistent and severe headache with no other explanation, and failure to respond to powerful pain medications were textbook warning signs that should have prompted any physician following the standard of care to suspect cryptococcal meningitis and order a spinal tap without delay.
On June 18, 2024, nearly three weeks into the hospitalization, the infectious disease specialist finally suggested a lumbar puncture. The test was not ordered urgently. It was not performed for another three days. On June 21, the spinal tap was done, and the results immediately confirmed a severe cryptococcal infection of the central nervous system. By then, the decedent had already developed severe cerebral edema — dangerous swelling of the brain — and his condition had progressed beyond recovery. He died on June 28, 2024, at age 49, survived by his son, siblings, and other family members.
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