West Des Moines, Iowa Personal Injury Blog

Iowa residents who suffer from fibromyalgia may be interested in the results of a study that was published in Arthritis Care & Research. According to the study, there should be agreement between both the criteria-based diagnosis of fibromyalgia and the clinical diagnosis of the disease. For the study, the investigators identified potential diagnostic misclassifications of fibromyalgia by comparing published criteria with clinical diagnoses.

The participants of the study were 497 patients from a university clinic. The patients were required to complete two forms. One was the 2010 American College of Rheumatology questionnaire regarding preliminary diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia, and the other form was the Multidimensional Health Assessment Questionnaire. After the patients completed the two questionnaires, they were examined by rheumatology personnel.

Many risks accompany pregnancy and birth, and parents in Iowa sometimes must cope with a birth injury known as Erb's palsy. This condition results from injury to the brachial plexus nerves during a difficult or poorly executed delivery or cesarean section. The brachial plexus nerves govern the shoulder and arm. Stretching them too much during delivery by moving an infant's head in the opposite direction of the shoulder results in damage that leaves the infant with loss of sensation or muscle control of the shoulder or arm. Symptoms range from weakness to paralysis.

Over time, an infant might recover naturally from the injury and regain function. Physical therapy also plays a role in helping infants restore nerve connections. Physicians treating infants with Erb's palsy observe symptoms during the early stages to detect signs of recovery. Surgical intervention is often undertaken when improvements are not evident. Surgery has the best chance of correcting problems when completed during an infant's first year. Studies who investigated long-term results for infants who did not receive surgery showed that between 20 and 25 percent of them had impaired shoulder or arm function throughout their lives.

Medical mistakes claim hundreds of thousands of lives each year around the country, and many of these errors happen in operating rooms. Surgeons in Iowa work under incredible pressure, and even minor distractions like loud noises or negative thoughts can make a potentially deadly mistake 66 percent more likely. This was the conclusion reached by researchers from Columbia University after observing how a surgeon reacted to stress during operations.

The researchers issued the surgeon with a special shirt that measured electrical impulses and heart rate variations during surgical procedures. The surgeon wore the Hexoskin Smart Shirt under his scrubs as he performed 25 operations on 12 patients at Stanford Medical Center in California. Researchers also installed video recording equipment in the operating room so they could identify mistakes. The timing of the operating room errors were then compared to the surgeon's heart rate to see if they were stress-related.

When Iowa parents take their children to the doctor, they may not even consider that their kids could be at risk of a medical mistake. However, like all patients, children's health can be put at risk when medical professionals make errors. The results of these doctor errors can be significant, and they may happen for a number of reasons. While some medical mistakes come down to misdiagnoses or errors in judgment, others can be exacerbated by confusion stemming from the use of electronic health records (EHRs).

A recent study analyzed over 9,000 reports of medical errors related to pediatric patient safety at three different health care facilities between 2012 and 2017. The researchers found that over half of all recorded mistakes were related to medication and the use of EHRs. Researchers said that the user interfaces of these systems can be confusing. In addition, EHR systems often fail to issue any kind of alert if a medication dosage appears to be incorrect. Most of the errors related to incorrect dosages of medication given to children, especially overdoses.