T. H., Special Administrator
of the Estate of P. A. H., Deceased,
Plaintiff,
vs
Juliette A. Valeriano, M.D.,
David Hines, M.D. and
Westlake Community Hospital,
Defendants.In this medical malpractice lawsuit, this plaintiff alleged that from January 1st to the 11th, 1997, her daughter was improperly treated for Stevens-Johnson syndrome, which makes the skin look blistered and burned, which then progressed into Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis, following an extremely severe adverse reaction from taking a prescription of Cipro, a potent antibiotic, for an ear infection. Although she was transferred to the burn unit at Loyola University Medical Center on January 11th, it was too late. After living with what must have been excruciating pain and suffering, she died on January 21, 1997.
To those in the medical community, take note: This started out as blisters in her mouth and a skin rash. Don't ever forget it. If you ever run into this rare condition it is of utmost importance that it be treated appropriately and immediately.
To the public: We don't mean to scare you into not taking Cipro if necessary. It is but one of the many modern wonder drugs that have saved countless lives. This was just one very rare and unfortunate occurrence.
We have cropped the photo below to conceal the identity of the deceased and hope that her family doesn't mind terribly. Our deepest regrets and condolences go out to them. We feel that the health care consuming public has every right to know about what can and does go wrong sometimes. For us to have written that by the time she was transferred, ninety-five percent of her skin had sloughed off, and if she had lived, her hands and feet would have had to have been amputated because of severe gangrene that had set in, can't quite describe what these pictures do.
Dr. Juliette A. Valeriano settled for $699 thousand, Dr. David Hines for $1 million and Westlake Community Hospital contributed an additional $900 thousand for a total of $2,599,000.