Sommers Schwartz attorneys Matthew Turner and Alanna Jonna filed a medical malpractice lawsuit on behalf of a woman who sustained permanent and catastrophic injuries after her MRSA infection returned because the defendants failed to appropriately monitor her recovery from the MRSA infection.

According to the complaint, the plaintiff suffered a MRSA infection after spinal fusion surgery.  The infection was initially treated properly with IV antibiotics and then oral antibiotics until the patient was symptom-free.  She went to the defendant hospital for her last follow-up appointment with the defendant infectious disease physician who was managing her post-operative methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection. MRSA is a type of hospital infection caused by a strain of bacteria resistant to many antibiotics used to treat ordinary staph infections.

At that follow-up appointment, the plaintiff was advised that she no longer needed to take the oral antibiotics to treat the infection. However, in violation of proper medical treatment, the doctor did not schedule another appointment to assess the plaintiff’s condition, did not order follow-up lab work, and failed to recognize the need to further monitor for the return of the plaintiff’s MRSA infection for at least three months following the stoppage of antibiotics. It is well known that antibiotics can suppress an MRSA infection while the antibiotics are in the patient’s system, but the patient is not actually cured. The infection can return with a vengeance after the antibiotics are stopped. That is why a patient must be monitored to ensure that the infection does not return.

As a result of the defendants’ professional negligence, the plaintiff’s infection did return. It quickly spread from her lumbar spine to other parts of her body, including both shoulders, a knee, heart, lungs, cervical spine, and brain. Besides suffering multiple strokes and spinal cord damage, the plaintiff also developed a host of other serious medical conditions, including severe sepsis, bacteremia, endocarditis, septic lesions and nodules on her lungs, and damages from septic emboli to her brain and other organs.

The plaintiff asserted that she would not have developed any of these conditions or suffered permanent damage and disability had the defendants followed the standard of care required for monitoring and treating her infection. She seeks compensation for her extensive losses, including past medical expenses and the cost of future hospitalizations, care, and therapy, lost wages and diminished future earning capacity, pain and suffering, and mental and emotional anguish, among other losses.