The plaintiff’s decedent, age fifty-nine, underwent an elective outpatient knee surgery in March 2003 at the defendant hospital. The surgery was reportedly uneventful. However, while in the post-anesthesia care unit her blood pressure began to steadily increase. She soon stopped breathing. The defendant, the nurse in the unit, administered Narcan to the patient.

The blood pressure spiked to 287/169. The plaintiff claimed that this caused the capillaries in her brain to leak fluid and her brain to swell against her skull. A call for a physician was made eleven minutes after she stopped breathing and a physician responded three minutes later. Medication was administered to counteract the Narcan. The decedent had suffered brain damage and was in a permanent vegetative state. Life support was removed two days later. The woman died four days after the surgery.

The plaintiffs alleged negligence by the nurse in failing to call a code or to immediately alert a physician for eleven minutes, during which brain injury resulted. The defendants argued that the nurse had immediately called for a physician, but received no response. The nurse claimed that she had simply followed the orders of the certified nurse anesthetist in the unit when a physician did not immediately appear after her first call. The defendants also contended that the decedent had actually died due to an extremely rare tumor in her adrenal glands, which caused her blood pressure to spike. An autopsy did not reveal any tumor.

According to a report, a $675,000 verdict was returned.

With permission from Medical Malpractice Verdicts, Settlements & Experts; Lewis Laska, Editor, 901 Church St., Nashville, TN 37203-3411, 1-800-298-6288.