Indiana Injury Lawyer Blog

At least three Japanese automakers are recalling as many 3.4 million vehicles around the world, because of the possibility that airbag systems in these automobiles could injure passengers.

The automobiles are being recalled by Toyota Motor Corp. Nissan Motor Corp. and Honda. This is believed to be the largest recall involving air bags manufactured by Japanese manufacturer, Takata. This company is one of the largest manufacturers of airbags and seat belts in the world.

According to the companies involved, the recall is linked to possible defects in the airbag for the front passenger seat that may cause the airbag to not inflate properly at the time of an accident. As a result of this failure, there is a serious risk that the airbag may catch fire, causing injuries to passengers. So far, there have been no reports of any injuries or fatalities linked to the defective airbags.

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Federal officials announced an investigation into reports of several nursing home and hospital deaths involving bed rails. The Food and Drug Administration is investigating at least 150 fatalities involving mostly older adults. These occurred between 2003 through May 2012. In all of these cases, the persons died after they became trapped in the bed rails attached to beds in nursing homes and hospitals.

Bed rails are used in hospital and nursing homes in order to prevent an adult patient from falling off the bed, and also to help the patient ambulate. However, as these fatalities indicate, older patients who suffer from Alzheimer's disease or dementia may get confused and become trapped in these bed rails. The patient may get trapped between one of the metal bars and the mattress. This entrapment may be serious enough to cause serious injury, suffocation, or even death.

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A new review of safety issues involving 3 medications that were recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration finds that the agency likely jumped the gun in approving these medications. That has Indiana product liability attorneys and consumer safety groups asking whether the Food and Drug Administration is speeding up the approval of new medications at the cost of patient safety.

The review has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and focuses on the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of 3 drugs that were approved recently. The drugs in question are Boehringer Iingelheim’s Pradaxa, AstraZeneca’s Caprelsa, and Novartis’ Gilenya.

Pradaxa is a popular blood thinner which was launched in 2010, Gilenya was approved for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, while Caprelsa was approved for the treatment of cancer.

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Even as researchers warn of an ever-increasing risk of lead exposure-related health effects in children, the federal administration has moved ahead to slash funding for an important lead poisoning prevention program.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s lead poisoning prevention program channels funds to state health departments in order to conduct lead screening programs. The funds for this lead poisoning prevention program have been cut by approximately 93%.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s lead poisoning prevention program received $2 million in funding this year. That was a dramatic decline from $29.2 million last year. Most of the money goes for screening programs by state health departments, while the rest of the money goes toward education programs and data collection. These are important activities that help health agencies understand the extent of lead poisoning and exposure hazards in the country.

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For millions of Americans, medical devices have meant an improved quality of life. However, many of these people also suffer injuries from medical devices that were not tested adequately before they were implanted in their bodies.

According to a new report by Consumer Reports, there are an increasing number of American patients who live with some kind of medical devices. These devices range all the way from defibrillators to vaginal mesh. Many of these devices are untested. According to Consumer Reports, in many cases, manufacturers are getting their medical devices approved by the Food And Drug Administration by merely filing paperwork.

Getting a simple new medical device approved by the Food and Drug Administration costs just over $4,000. A company only has to pay this user fee to begin selling a medical product that can be inserted in the bodies of millions of Americans.

Continue reading "Untested Medical Devices Compromise Patient Safety" »

Pharmaceutical companies will soon be required to disclose payments that they make to doctors. The aim is to increase transparency, and ensure that doctors influenced by these payments do not make medical decisions that impact patient safety and increase healthcare costs.

Every year, thousands of doctors across the country receive payments from pharmaceutical drug companies. Doctors are paid for research they conduct, as well as for consulting and speaking engagements. Besides making cash gifts, many companies also pay doctors in the form of dinners and vacations. There are a large number of doctors across the country who receive such payments from pharmaceutical companies. In fact, the pharmaceutical drug industry spends millions of dollars every year on such payments.

Several studies have indicated that doctors can be influenced by the payments that they receive from pharmaceutical companies. These doctors, it has been found, are much more likely to contribute to high costs of medical care by prescribing more expensive drugs, or recommending medical devices even when they are not necessary.

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This Halloween, thousands of people across Indiana may have a heightened risk of suffering serious eye injuries from the use of decorative contact lenses.

The Indiana Attorney General and the Indiana Optometric Association are joining hands to warn consumers about the risks from using these decorative contact lenses. Come Halloween, demand for these lenses will increase substantially, as people use ghoulish and scary contact lenses to complete their Halloween costumes. However, users must know that indiscriminate and improper use of these contact lenses could increase their risk of suffering a number of injuries, including corneal ulcers, abrasion, and corneal infections. Indiana optometrists are also warning about the risk of infections when people share contact lenses with each other. Some of these infections and eye injuries can be serious enough to lead to blindness.

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Last year, Americans consumed $28.1 billion worth of nutritional supplements, in the process feeding one of the most unregulated manufacturing industries in the country. Not only is there little evidence that many of these supplements work as well as they claim, but there is also increasing evidence that many of them contain dangerous ingredients that are not mentioned on their labels.

It’s hard for Indiana personal injury lawyers to overstate the dangers to Americans from unsafe nutritional and herbal supplements. The Food and Drug Administration does not have the authority to approve supplements before they're released into the market. Unlike with pharmaceutical drugs that have to be processed through a conventional approval procedure before they're made available to consumers, nutritional supplements can be introduced into the market without FDA approval. The only time that the Food and Drug Administration can step in to pressure the company to withdraw products, is when there are reports of illnesses or injuries from the use of these products.

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The Food and Drug Administration needs to do much more to prevent cardiac device defects that result in a recall. The Government Accountability Office has just released a report which chides the federal agency for its oversight failures.

According to the report, cardiac devices account for some of the most frequent medical device recalls initiated by the Food and Drug Administration. The results were based on an audit of data from 2005 to 2009. According to the data, there were 3,510 medical device recalls during this period of time. Out of these, cardiovascular medical devices were the most frequently recalled devices.

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Last month, Triad Group announced a recall of alcohol swabs due to fears of bacterial contamination. According to Triad, the risk of someone actually falling sick from these contaminated swabs was actually quite small. The parents of a two-year-old boy, who died from a hospital-acquired infection, have now filed a lawsuit against Triad, claiming that the swabs were responsible for his fatal infection.

Two-year-old Harrison Kothari had been admitted to the hospital for a routine surgery, and had been scheduled to be discharged in a few days time, but on 1 December, he began to suffer acute organ failure from bacterial meningitis. Harrison died soon after. His parents struggled to understand the cause of their son's death, until they came across reports of a recall of the alcohol swabs that had been used during his procedure. That recall notice by Triad Group warned consumers of the contaminated alcohol swabs, and cautioned medical professional against using these swabs even for cleaning the site of an injection. According to Triad, the risk of an infection developing from these contaminated swabs is very minute.

Continue reading "Indiana Patients Follow Legal Case Linking Hospital-Acquired Infection and Alcohol Pads" »

The number of auto defect complaints made by motorists to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spiked in 2010, spurred, no doubt, by the massive Toyota recalls last year.

According to the NHTSA, it received a four-fold increase of more than 40,000 complaints in 2010. Approximately, 25% of the complaints were related to Toyota vehicles. The automaker suffered the biggest fall from grace in 2010, with defect complaints relating to its vehicles jumping to 87 for every 100,000 vehicles in 2010. Nissan came in at the second spot with 62 complaints for every 100,000 vehicles, and Volkswagen had 50 complaints for every 100,000 vehicles.

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For Indiana product liability lawyers, this is a decision that could not have come too soon. After months of consideration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission this week announced tough new crib safety rules, including a complete ban on drop side cribs, as well as requirements for tougher and more durable crib hardware.

The decision comes after immense pressure by child safety groups, parents and Indiana product liability attorneys who have been concerned about the dozens of deaths and hundreds of crib-related suffocation incidents. There have been at least 32 confirmed reports of infants dying in their cribs from suffocation, entrapment or falls. Besides these, there have been hundreds of incidents reported from around the country, where children nearly suffocated to death after being trapped in the space created by the detached drop side. In these cases, the children were fortunate enough to be rescued by their parents and caregivers.

Continue reading "CPSC Announces Tough New Crib Design Rules" »

It is a well-known fact that children are just as much at risk from choking on pieces of food, as on toys. Earlier this year, a study confirmed that 60% of children below the age of four, who had to be rushed to hospital emergency rooms after a choking incident, had choked on food, and not toys.

In spite of this, there are few or no restrictions on the kind of foods that you can allow a three or four-year-old child to have. In contrast, there are a number of barriers between a child and a small toy, or a toy with detachable parts. This is in spite of the fact that many of the small toys that are believed to be a choking hazard, like small balls, are shaped and sized exactly like foods that can cause serious harm to a child, like gumdrops.

Continue reading "Calls for Warning Labels on Foods Get Louder" »

New radiation technologies are offering patients more focused and precise treatment, but as a series of investigative reports in the New York Times shows, lack of safeguards, software flaws, faulty programming, poor safety procedures or inadequate staffing and training are causing these technologies to harm the very patients they are meant to treat.

The New York Times profiles a series of radiation errors involving new, more advanced and highly sophisticated machines capable of delivering a treatment called Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT). The errors have included overdoses caused by poorly configured systems, radiation that misses all or part of the target or is focused on the wrong part of the body and other errors. With these increasingly sophisticated radiation tools, you would think that the margin for errors would be virtually nil. In fact, as the NYT reports, the complexity of the machines that deliver the radiation, combined with the failure of hospitals to implement processes that catch errors in time and poorly trained staff, have all helped create a “crisis” situation.

Continue reading "Indianapolis Radiation Therapies Offer Hope, But Also Present Risk of Injuries " »

Thanks to relentless efforts by consumer safety groups and product liability attorneys in Indiana and around the country, there are stricter safety standards in place for children’s products. However, it is important for parents and caregivers to know that their children may also be at danger from other consumer products in the home. Last week, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of up to 50 million rollup blinds and window shades, after a series of strangulation deaths involving little children.

The CPSC has confirmed eight reports of deaths in which children were strangulated by the blind and shade cords since 2001. It has also received reports of at least 16 incidents in which children wrapped the cord around themselves but were rescued in time. This recall is believed to be the second largest American product recall, and the latest in a series of recalls of window coverings. The last massive recall was nine years ago when 85 million blinds had to be recalled for similar hazards.

Continue reading "Indiana Children at Risk of Strangulation from Defective Roll Up Blinds, Roman Shades" »

Indianapolis residents hoping to lose weight may be in danger because of common diet supplements sold in health food and vitamin stores. The Food and Drug Administration reports that weight-loss capsules called StarCaps could be hazardous to the health of many in Indiana and around the country. Made primarily of papaya, the capsules also contained a potent pharmaceutical drug called bumetanide and can have serious side effects.

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In a January 15, 2009 press release, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced a recall of Simplicity’s Rainforest Portable Play Yards. These products are sold in major department stores, including Wal-Mart, Target, and Toys-R-Us. Manufactured in China and sold under the company name, Simplicity for Children, with a Fisher-Price logo, these play yards pose a hazard to children in Indiana and around the country due to the unexpected collapse of the side railing. This collapse can cause entrapment and serious injury to young children.

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Today's front page for CNN's website draws attention to an issue highlighted here last December (Indiana Residents Risk Personal Injury in Local Pools). Indiana pools must have new safety drains in place before they open for business or risk being shut down. This is according to the The Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act signed by President Bush on December 19, 2007.

The FDA released a new warning concerning antiepileptic medications and an increased risk of suicide. The FDA will mandate that more than 30 medications prescribed for seizures must carry additional warnings of the increased risk. The agency also released a statement directing physicians to inform patients and their families about the medications. Physicians in Indiana should be receiving these notices very soon.

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With the arrival of winter chill, Indiana residents’ thoughts turn to pool-side vacations in warm climates. But people living in Indiana should think twice before diving into the deep-end or dipping your toes into the wading pool. Tens of thousands of swimming pools, hot tubs, and spas are at risk for being closed because of a deadly hidden danger: Pool Filter Systems.

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