Current Events

The city has doled out $134 million this year for medical mishaps at its 11 public hospitals, some during child birth and others resulting in permanent disabilities.

And taxpayers are picking up the tab — more than half a billion dollars in the last four fiscal years alone, city records show.

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Health officials in Mexico order recall based on potentially harmful pharmaceutical ingredients.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers that Reumofan Plus, marketed as a “natural” dietary supplement for pain relief and other serious conditions, contains several active pharmaceutical ingredients not listed on the label that could be harmful.

Consumers who are currently taking Reumofan Plus or who have recently stopped taking Reumofan Plus should immediately consult a health care professional. Consumers should not buy or start using the product.

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A Jefferson Parish jury has awarded a Webster Parish woman $24.2 million in damages in a medical malpractice lawsuit. Jurors sided with the woman in finding that her toddler was left with irreversible brain damage after an infusion pump malfunctioned during his surgery at Ochsner Clinic Foundation seven years ago.

Tyronglia Willis, of Springhill, sued Ochsner and the pump manufacturers in 24th Judicial District Court in Gretna on behalf of her son, Ty'Kevion Kidd, who was 3 when he underwent surgery in March 2005 at the Jefferson Highway hospital to correct a congenital heart defect.

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U.S. health regulators announced a recall of CareFusion's Alaris pump module Model 8100, saying a potential keypad malfunction in the infusion pump could cause serious injury or death.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the affected pump modules, used for delivering a variety of fluids, drugs and blood products to patients, were manufactured between October 2011 and February 2012.

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A New Jersey teenager left brain-damaged after being struck by a line drive off a metal bat while he was playing in a youth baseball game will receive $14.5 million to settle his lawsuit against the bat manufacturer, Little League Baseball and a sporting goods chain.

The settlement of Steven Domalewski's lawsuit was announced in state Superior Court on Wednesday morning in Passaic County. The boy, now 18, lives in Wayne, N.J. His family had claimed the metal bat was unsafe because baseballs could carom off it at much faster speeds than wooden bats.

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Implanted pumps made by Medtronic Inc. (MDT) to deliver painkillers and drugs may corrode and fail, said U.S. regulators who requested a meeting to discuss the issue.

The Food and Drug Administration letter stems from an inspection at the neuromodulation unit for Minneapolis-based Medtronic that concluded May 9 and found corrosion in the SynchroMed II pump can cause the motor to stall or seize.

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A deadly outbreak of salmonella in cantaloupes is stirring controversy about how transparent state and federal health authorities should be as they investigate the source of food-borne illnesses.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Indiana State Department of Health advised consumers Friday to throw out cantaloupe grown in southwestern Indiana following a salmonella outbreak that killed two people and sickened about 150 people across the country.

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The number of people sickened by Salmonella traced to chicks and ducklings from an Ohio mail order hatchery has risen from 123 to 163, according to a report released Monday by the U.S.  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.   

The illnesses - linked to contact with live baby poultry sold by Mt. Hatchery of Cincinnati, OH - began in March of this year. Three strains of Salmonella - Salmonella Infantis, Salmonella Lille and Salmonella Newport - have been associated with animals from the hatchery.

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Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agency instructed medical devices major, St. Jude Medical, Inc.to conduct a study to examine insulation failure in Riata defibrillator leads, a thin wire used to connect cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator (CRT-D) or implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) to the heart to monitor abnormal heart rhythm.

The agency has recommended that X-rays or other imaging alternatives should be conducted in patients who have been implanted with the heart device to increase clinical know-how. The FDA also recommended St. Jude to carry out post-market surveillance studies to accumulate information regarding the risks associated with the Riata leads for 3 years.

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Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), which faces about 8,000 lawsuits over hip implants it recalled in 2010, agreed to pay about $600,000 to resolve three cases in the first settlements of the litigation, people familiar with the accords said.

Officials of J&J’s DePuy unit agreed earlier this month to settle Nevada residents’ suits over the company’s ASR hip implants, two people familiar with the agreement said. The company will pay about $200,000 a case to resolve the suits before they were scheduled to go to trial later this year, the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the accords.

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An outbreak of salmonella infections across 20 states has resulted in two deaths and sickened 141 people in recent weeks, state and federal authorities said.

The source of the outbreak appears to be cantaloupes from a farm in southwestern Indiana, the authorities said. They urged consumers who have purchased melons grown in that area to discard them.

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