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Victims often have serious brain damage when not timely diagnosed and treated at an ER or doctor’s office.

Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, or WKS, is caused by a lack of thiamine, or vitamin B1. A  thiamine insufficiency can occur before or after a patient is admitted for medical treatment, but patients who have undergone gastrointestinal surgery, weight-loss, or bariatric surgery may be especially at risk. Alcoholism sometimes causes it. Even women who have severe, prolonged nausea and vomiting during pregnancy are at great risk for this nutritional deficiency. Diets rich in carbohydrates may also increase the need for thiamine.

Any patient who presents with post-surgical signs of undernourishment, dehydration or prolonged nausea and vomiting should be evaluated for thiamine deficiency. If left untreated, acute thiamine deficiency can lead to irreversible brain damage.

Signs of acute thiamine deficiency include:

• Confusion
• Loss of balance while walking
• Visual disturbances
• Inability to concentrate
• Mental sluggishness and short-term memory issues
• Apathy
• Coma

An ER staff might see these symptoms and presume “stroke,” which is then ruled out by radiology; the patient may be discharged without the right diagnosis. Treatment to reverse the problem is relatively easy. An IV infusion or a shot with vitamin B1 will replenish the thiamine deficiency and avoid WKS completely. But diagnosis and treatment must be untaken immediately. Time is short. Unfortunately, failures to diagnose thiamine deficiency are all too common. The result can be stroke-like brain damage.

If you have experienced a situation as described above, or been diagnosed with Wernicke's Encephalopathy or Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome, please contact our office.

IV infiltrations occur when medicines being delivered by an IV get outside the circulatory system and into the body. Some infiltrations merely result in a bruise or slight swelling around the injection site. Other infiltrations can lead to the loss of function in a limb or permanent disfigurement. In this video Marc discusses what happens when an IV infiltration occurs. He further distinguishes between vesicants and non-vesicants and what each respective medicine can do to the body. 

Radiology is one of the greatest benefits to modern medicine. It allows us to see inside the body without having to physically go inside. However, there are times when a radiology error occurs and it could mean the difference between life and death. Radiology errors can affect how other medical providers treat your condition. Attorney Stewart provides some examples of what can happen when a radiologist misses something on an x-ray, CT-scan, MRI, or PET scan.

One of the scariest events that can happen to a patient is having a surgery go well only to discover that something is present in the body that did not exist there before. Retained foreign body objects are objects left in the body after a surgery. They can be something as simple as a sponge or something as frightening as scissors or a scalpel. The objects can impede healing, set up infection, and ultimately cause a host of side-effects that could be life threatening. Attorney Stewart discusses what constitutes an actionable claim involving a retained foreign body object, as well as what is not considered a retained foreign body object.