, as a story in the Pennsylvania Record, among other news sites, reports.
In December 2020, Mario Adajar, MD, 59, an internist in Wyoming, Penn., sought treatment for his foot calluses and the chronic ulceration of his right foot.
Dr. Adajar consulted a podiatrist, who has surgical privileges at Wilkes-Barre Commonwealth Hospital. According to his complaint, Dr. Adajar made the podiatrist aware that he had type 2 diabetes and had recently undergone a kidney transplant.
Over the next several months, Adajar continued to be treated by the podiatrist who, among other things, debrided and cleaned his patient’s ulcerated right foot on multiple occasions. In June 2021, working out of the hospital’s Wound Healing Center, the podiatrist placed Dr. Adajar’s right leg in a total contact cast.
By the following day, the patient experienced what he later described as “excruciating” pain around the cast. He was also running a fever of 102.3. Taken to a local emergency department, Dr. Adajar soon went into septic shock, accompanied by both atrial fibrillation and acute hypoxic respiratory failure.
Doctors soon had a diagnosis: a gram-negative bacilli infection. Meanwhile, his right leg had become severely gangrenous, of the gas gangrene type. Nevertheless, after treatment, Dr. Adajar was discharged on June 15, 2021, and advised to continue with his follow-up, which included a referral to physical therapy. However, on July 27, 2021, doctors at Wilkes-Barre Commonwealth were forced to amputate Dr. Adajar’s right leg through the fibula and tibia.
In his suit, Dr. Adajar claims that the decision by the podiatrist and his associates to place him in a total contact cast was the direct and immediate cause of his injuries, most catastrophically the amputation of his right leg. He and his legal team are seeking damages “in excess of $50,000,” the standard language in Pennsylvania for cases likely to involve much larger awards.
Dr. Adajar, despite the loss of his right leg, continues to practice internal medicine.
Doctor wins forceps-delivery suit
Last month, a Virginia jury decided in favor of a physician accused of damaging a baby’s eye during delivery, a story in The Winchester Star reports.
In December 2015, Melissa Clements went to Winchester Medical Center, part of Valley Health, to have her baby delivered. Her doctor was ob.gyn. George F. Craft II, at the time a member of Winchester Women’s Specialists. At one point during the roughly 30-minute delivery, Dr. Craft used forceps to remove Ms. Clements’s baby, who in the process sustained facial fractures and left-eye damage.
At trial, Craft argued that a forceps delivery was justified because the baby was stuck and his patient had refused a C-section.
The attorney for the plaintiffs — which included Ms. Clements’s husband — claimed that the use of forceps was premature, as professional guidelines require that a woman in labor be allowed at least 3 hours to push on her own before forceps are employed. (The suit, initially filed in 2019, also accused Dr. Craft of failing to properly inform his patient about the risks of, and alternatives to, this form of delivery. That part of the complaint was dropped, however, prior to the recent trial.)
The jury debated just 50 minutes before deciding Dr. Craft wasn’t medically negligent in the birth of William, Ms. Clements’s now 6-year-old son, who will be forced to wear contact lenses or glasses for life, or undergo corrective surgery.
As Dr. Craft’s attorney explained at trial: “He [Dr. Craft] hoped to give her [Ms. Clements] what she wanted: a vaginal delivery. But forceps techniques can and will cause injuries, even when properly placed.”