Dental Hygienist Underwent Foot Amputation due to Failure to Treat Blood Clot

Rikki Dascal, Bradley Zimmerman, and Alan Fuchsberg obtained a significant settlement on behalf of a 29-year-old dental hygienist who tragically underwent a foot amputation as a result of her doctor’s failure to timely treat a blood clot.

Our client presented to the emergency room with complaints of pain, numbness, coldness, burning, and discoloration in her foot; and a CT performed shortly after her admission revealed that she had a blockage in her artery. To treat the blockage, our client was given a blood thinner and was transferred to the vascular surgery department so that they could perform a thrombectomy to remove the blood clot.

If a blood clot is left untreated for an extended period of time, the clot can lead to infection, stroke, and even death; therefore, it is imperative that a patient presenting with a blood clot be treated as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, without providing an explanation, our client’s doctor decided not to perform the operation, opting to treat our client with a blood thinner alone. As a result, our client’s surgery was delayed, and she was left with an untreated blood clot for over 50 hours.

While our client was awaiting surgery, her condition worsened, causing her foot to become ischemic, without blood flow. In addition, our client was screaming and crying in pain for hours. Even though the doctors treating her exchanged text messages about her screaming in pain, they failed to elevate her care level or push for surgery. It was later revealed that our client was in excruciating pain because her tissue was dying, which was a direct result of the untreated blood clot.

The Jacob Fuchsberg Law Firm obtained a vascular surgery expert who opined that there was no reason for our client’s surgery to be delayed so significantly as she did not have any life-threatening health issues that would have warranted such delay. Furthermore, our expert stated that given our client’s presenting symptoms and initial diagnosis, she should have immediately received surgery to treat the blood clot. Had she received surgery when she initially arrived to the hospital, she would not have had to suffer from a foot amputation at such a young age.