$1M

Case Details

This case involved an 81-year-old man who died after open-heart surgery at a Connecticut hospital. Our investigation determined that his death was the result of a stroke caused by an air bubble entering his heart from the heart-lung bypass machine (the machine that keeps the patient’s blood flowing to vital organs while the heart is stopped and the surgeon is performing the operation). We obtained the log from the machine, which showed that the perfusionist (the person who operates the machine) had disabled the alarms on the heart-lung bypass machine, including the air bubble detector. As a result, the machine did not stop pumping automatically in response to the air bubble, which would likely have prevented the air bubble from being pumped into the patient’s heart. The perfusionist claimed that the air bubble did not come from the machine, but was the result of the surgeon manipulating the patient’s heart in order to insert a catheter. The perfusionist stated that he had never seen the heart manipulated that way during the many open-heart surgeries he was involved in over the years. At a settlement mediation, the two defendants agreed to pay a total of one million dollars to settle the case.

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