Covington Personal Injury Law Blog

Some Kentucky residents might have heard that a doctor in Florida was sued after removing a kidney from a woman who went in for another type of surgery. The woman was supposed to have bones fused in her lower back.

One of the surgeons mistook her kidney for a tumor and removed it. The lawsuit argued that the woman had no say in the matter. Her two primary surgeons settled for $250,000 each. There was also an undisclosed settlement with the surgeon who made the error although he admitted no wrongdoing. While the primary surgeons had malpractice insurance, the one who made the error did not.

There are many skilled and diligent surgeons in Kentucky. When you suffer from a health condition that necessitates surgery, it can be a bit distressing to have to entrust your well-being to a surgeon and other medical team members. Your goal, of course, is to treat whatever adverse condition you have and to ultimately achieve a full recovery.  

The problem is that surgeons and medical staff members are human beings who are capable of committing errors. Beyond that, they are also capable of direct negligence, which, in a surgical setting, can have disastrous, if not fatal results. Before you undergo an operation, you'll want to learn as much about surgical errors as possible and know where to seek support if a problem arises. 

When Kentucky teenagers are driving with only other teens as passengers, car accident death rates increase significantly. According to the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, when there are only teenagers in a crashed vehicle, the rate of fatalities rises by 51 percent. For the driver and passengers in other vehicles, the fatality rate is 56 percent higher.

In the same teen driver/passenger crash scenario, the fatality rate for pedestrians and cyclists involved jumps by 17 percent, according to the AAA study. It jumps by 45 percent for the teenage driver as well. When teenagers are driving with passengers who are at least 35 years old, on the other hand, fatality rates are 8 percent lower.

Kentucky residents should be aware that a projected 1.4 million people in the United States suffer from Lewy body dementia, or LBD. LBD is a progressive and complex brain disorder in which abnormal deposits of the alpha-synuclein protein build up in the portions of the brain that control a person's movement, behavior and cognitive ability. Due to the similarity between its symptoms and diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, LBD is severely underdiagnosed. Many health care professionals, including physicians, have no familiarity with LBD.

It has not yet been definitely determined what causes LBD, although there is research that is being conducted to find the cause. There is a belief that there are multiple factors that contribute to the development of the disease. Environmental factors and genetics along with the processes that occur during natural aging are suspected of making individuals vulnerable to the disease.