Medical malpractice and septic shock: A lethal combination

Septic shock can devastate any healthy person’s body. Major surgery disrupts your immune system and may expose your body to various bacteria, so it proves essential for physicians to use care in performing all surgical duties.

Hospitals and surgical rooms must be completely sterile. As sepsis enters the body through wounds, any unsterilized tool, unclean hand or exposed skin cells from surgeons can wreak havoc on the body. Proving that you or a loved one suffered from septic shock from a hospital is crucial to receiving compensation for your medical expenses and losses.

Septic shock: Initial symptoms

After an infection in your body occurs, sometimes caused by unsterilized hospital tools or physician gloves, sepsis begins by triggering inflammatory responses. An immediate release of chemicals ensues and may cause severe consequences.

To be diagnosed with sepsis, you must have a confirmed infection from a wound and experience:

• Your body temperature falling below 96.8 degrees or above 101 degrees
• Your heart beating faster than 90 beats per minute
• Your respiratory rate measuring higher than 20 breaths per minute

As your body continues to aggressively fight the infection, you may experience:

• Difficulty breathing
• Abnormal heart pumping
• Confusion or disorientation
• Abdominal pain
• Decrease in platelet count

Septic shock occurs if not treated immediately, and this diagnosis can kill.

Negligence and sepsis

To prove medical malpractice, your attorney must aid you in proving that a hospital’s actions were negligent. To obtain compensation, a court must agree to the following circumstances of negligence.

1. Duty: The hospital should have acted with care in assisting you with surgery.
2. Breach: The hospital did not act with a reasonable amount of care by introducing infectious bacteria into your body.
3. Cause: The hospital’s actions specifically caused your sepsis.
4. Damages: A physician diagnosed you with sepsis, and the negligence of the hospital caused injury to your body.

When you need surgery, you expect to recover. You should never expect to be diagnosed with a life-threatening infection due to the actions of the hospital. If a hospital visit caused your sepsis, know that filing a medical malpractice claim may give you the relief you need to recover.