Medical accidents and emergencies do happen, but many blood clots are preventable. Unfortunately, healthcare providers can often be focused on treating problems after the fact, rather than preventing them from occurring in the first place. If physicians or other healthcare professionals fail to take appropriate, medically indicated steps to prevent unnecessary risks to their patients, they may be held liable for medical negligence. If your healthcare provider failed to discuss with you strategies for preventing blood clots in women while pregnant or taking hormonal contraceptives, and you developed a preventable blood clot as a result, consider scheduling a consultation with one of our experienced Albuquerque attorneys to get a case evaluation and a clear picture of your legal options. Call 505-218-9949 to book your no-obligation appointment at Erin Marshall Law today.
What Are Blood Clots?
The blood that circulates through a living human body is a liquid. This liquid consistency is what enables the heart to pump blood throughout the body, but the viscosity of blood (how “thick” vs. “runny” it is as a liquid) can vary from one person to another, and within a single person over time. You have probably noticed that blood also changes its consistency in response to specific conditions; if you get a scratch on your leg, you (hopefully) wash the cut and bandage it, and for most people, the next step is to wait for the bleeding to stop.
Hemostasis: Healthy Blood Clots
The bleeding stops on its own – instead of after all the blood in your body has slowly leaked out through the tear in your skin – as Johns Hopkins Medicine explains, due to a process called hemostasis. The word hemostasis is actually a compound word made by medical researchers out of two Greek root words: haimo, meaning blood, and stasis, meaning a stop or standstill, so you can think of hemostasis as your blood encountering a wound and saying, “Whoa! Hold everything!”
The blood clotting that takes place during hemostasis in response to a cut or wound is essential; in fact, people who have anti-clotting disorders such as hemophilia and those who take blood-thinning medications to manage other health concerns are at increased risk of excessive bleeding in response to otherwise minor injuries. Without treatment, uncontrolled bleeding can quickly lead to fatal shock, as the sharp decrease in blood volume makes it difficult for the heart to pump freshly oxygenated blood to vital systems throughout the body.
Dangerous Blood Clots: DVT and PE
Sometimes, blood clots form even when there is no wound to protect and the body does not need a scab. Deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) are two of the most common examples of this type of pathological (unhealthy or dangerous) blood clot. When considered together as two variations on venous thromboembolism (VTE), these blood clots make up the most common of all causes of hospital-related preventable deaths, as the Armstrong Institute from Johns Hopkins Medicine explains. Preventing blood clots is, as this information might suggest, extremely important to preventing unnecessarily early patient death.
What Is Medical Negligence?
The New Mexico Medical Malpractice Act (NMMA) explicitly provides for patients and their families to seek remedy through the state’s civil courts when healthcare providers cause harm through either breach of contract or personal injury. Personal injury claims are by far the more common of these two types of malpractice cases, and the vast majority of them are brought based on negligence.
Justice in Criminal Law vs. Compensation via Civil Courts
By contrast to charges of criminal negligence, which are statutorily defined in some jurisdictions – typically in contexts where a defendant’s actions are seen as posing a substantial risk to public safety – the negligence in civil lawsuits is alleged by plaintiffs seeking to recover damages in court. Civil lawsuits based on negligence account for the majority of personal injury claims across most categories, including medical malpractice.
Significance of Negligence in Medical Injury Cases
Personal injury lawsuits can sometimes be tried based on intentional tort, which would mean the plaintiff alleges that the defendant deliberately created the conditions that would lead to injury. In some limited contexts, personal injury cases may also be susceptible to “strict liability” – a legal principle under which a defendant is held to have absolute responsibility for preventing harms in a particular context, regardless of intention or degree of care.
Strict liability applies mainly to cases involving the ownership and handling of dangerous animals and to product liability claims. The latter may intersect with medical malpractice claims when a potentially defective medical device is concerned, but in most circumstances, pursuing a medical injury case will mean proving negligence on the part of a healthcare provider, whether that means a professional or a facility.
Proving Medical Negligence
There are four elements of negligence that the plaintiff in a civil lawsuit filed on this basis will need to prove to be awarded compensation by a New Mexico court. The elements are mutually dependent, meaning that failure to prove any one of the four can derail a case.
Duty of Care
All cases brought on the basis of negligence will need to begin by showing that the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty of care. However, one feature that distinguishes malpractice cases from others alleging negligence is that the duty of care a healthcare provider owes a patient is generally understood to be somewhat greater than the level of caution strangers on the street owe one another.
Breach of Duty
Freak accidents, forces of nature, and other circumstances beyond human control complicate life for millions, if not billions, of people every day. The medical field, in particular, can be challenging to work in because healthcare providers sometimes find themselves helpless to help their patients, despite giving their absolute best efforts. Physicians and other healthcare workers can only be held liable when a plaintiff can show clear fault – that is, that the defendant either did something they should not have done or failed to do something they were responsible for doing.
In healthcare contexts, upholding the duty of care usually means adhering to the “standard of practice” – the scientifically validated guidelines for patient care generally accepted within the medical community for situations involving the factors present in the case that has led to the medical negligence claim. Testimony from expert witnesses may be needed to show how and where a patient’s treatment deviated from this standard of practice.
Damages
Tort law generally follows a version of the “no harm, no foul” principle. Even if a defendant breached the duty of care they owed to the plaintiff, the plaintiff is not entitled to compensation unless he or she suffered some form of loss or harm as a result of that breach. Typically, these damages are divided into “economic” and “non-economic” damages.
The long-term health consequences of blood clots can vary widely, so when a medical malpractice claim is brought due to a healthcare provider’s negligence in anticipating and preventing blood clots, an important part of our work at Erin Marshall Law is often aimed at developing clear, evidence-based estimates of future financial and personal impacts stemming from the blood clot incident. The goal is to improve a patient’s chances of recovering compensation not only for the damages they have already sustained, but for the ones set in motion by the initial injury.
Causation
Plaintiffs are only entitled to compensation for damages if they can show a causal link between the defendant’s actions (or inaction) and the damages they have suffered. Proving causation generally means showing both “actual” cause – meaning that the plaintiff’s damages would not have occurred in the absence of the defendant’s tort, or fault – and “proximate” cause, which loosely speaking means that the plaintiff’s damages were a reasonably foreseeable outcome of the defendant’s conduct. In other words, healthcare providers are typically held liable for medical negligence only when they had reason to know – for instance, by an assessment of a patient’s risk factors – that their decision to administer one treatment or defer another might reasonably be expected to result in harm.
What Are the Risk Factors for Developing Blood Clots?
Various factors can contribute to changes in blood consistency; one you may be familiar with is the thickening, or increase in viscosity, associated with elevated levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. For people whose blood carries high levels of LDL cholesterol, particularly if there are signs that cholesterol deposits may be narrowing their arteries, doctors sometimes prescribe blood thinners to make the blood less viscous, and therefore easier to pump, throughout the body.
Other factors that can increase the risk of blood clots include long-term sitting (extended air travel is particularly associated with a risk of DVT in the lower legs), pregnancy, and hormonal contraceptives (birth control). Some infections, like COVID-19, can also increase the risk of developing a blood clot, especially in the short term.
Preventing Blood Clots in Hospitals
Johns Hopkins Medicine notes that medical interventions, from anti-clotting medications to compression gear, can be highly effective at reducing the incidence of blood clots associated with hospital admission. The Armstrong Institute even suggests that “best practice” prophylactic interventions may reduce the prevalence of VTE across all categories by as much as 70 percent – a greater than two-thirds margin. Preventing blood clots is also generally safer, easier, and even cheaper than treating blood clots once they have formed. Given the high risk of death associated with some types of VTE, preventing blood clots is the clearly preferable option.
Preventing Blood Clots in Women: Understanding and Addressing the Risk Factors
Unfortunately, healthcare providers may not always be trained in the blood clot risks that primarily affect women. The National Blood Clot Alliance reports that men actually have a slightly higher risk of experiencing a diagnosed VTE event at some point in their lives, but certain factors pertaining primarily or exclusively to women can significantly increase individual risk, with pregnancy and the use of hormonal contraceptives forming the most prevalent examples.
Discuss Your Blood Clot Experience With a Medical Injury Attorney
The tragic thing about blood clots is that so many of them are preventable, and yet not prevented. Although the prognosis for blood clot patients is usually good when the clot can be addressed before it moves to the brain, lungs, or heart, preventing blood clots from forming in the first place is a far safer strategy than waiting until clots have formed and then trying to resolve them before they can reach sensitive organs. Unfortunately, provider bias and lack of training to anticipate and address potential blood clot risks in female patients can sometimes put unnecessary roadblocks in the way of preventing blood clots in women.
Healthcare providers who fail to maintain the standard of practice for preventing blood clots in women may be held liable for medical negligence when their patients experience physical and financial harm. The New Mexico medical injury team at Erin Marshall Law is passionate about protecting women’s health through education and advocacy, and we are ready to hear your blood clot story. Reach our Albuquerque office today by calling 505-218-9949.
