Failure to Monitor Sedated Patient Leads to Brain Injury, Death, $2M Settlement

​Defendants in a Pennsylvania medical malpractice lawsuit will pay more than $2 million to the estate of a patient who died allegedly because she was not monitored for respiratory and cardiac problems after being sedated before ambulatory surgery, states a report from the January 2016 Zarin's Medical Liability Alert (subscription required). The 68-year-old patient was being prepared to undergo cataract surgery in an ambulatory surgery center. The plaintiff alleged that after the defendant anesthesiologist administered medication to sedate the patient, the patient suffered respiratory and cardiac distress and sustained injury to her brain because she was not properly monitored. The plaintiff claimed that the patient was left alone after being sedated and that she was found unresponsive 23 minutes later by the medical staff. She died several days later in a hospital.