After experiencing shortness of breath, chest pains, and other health problems, you may have gone to your doctor and learned that blood hasn’t been flowing properly to your heart.
If your doctor ordered you to receive a heart stent without considering or discussing with you any less invasive and risky alternatives, and the stent made little difference in your condition or even worse, you are now subject to heart stent complications, you may have a valid legal claim.
You should speak immediately with a medical device lawyer from Becker Law Office. In particular, a Kentucky unnecessary heart stents lawyer at our firm could investigating whether heart disease patients from Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and elsewhere received an unnecessary heart stenting procedure while being treated for heart disease at King’s Daughters Medical Center in Ashland, Kentucky.
A heart stent can open blood flow to the heart. It can be a necessity in emergencies like heart attacks or blocked arteries. However, if the patient is not showing life-threatening symptoms, inserting a cardiac stent may be unneeded and could cause dangerous heart stents side effects. In the end, the procedure could actually lead to more harm than good, medical experts say. Instead, doctors should order patients to take medication and make key lifestyle changes, according to these experts.
Shockingly, in 44 percent of the cases analyzed in a study published in 2011 in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), doctors didn’t even try medication and lifestyle changes before performing an elective (or non-emergency) heart stent procedure. The researchers found that only half of these stents were “appropriate,” while 12 percent were “inappropriate.”
According to a researcher interviewed by Bloomberg, a third of all elective heart stent procedures in the U.S., or about 200,000 per year, are completely unnecessary.
This means that doctors may have exposed a large number of patients to the many risks posed by stenting procedures, including perforated arteries, blood clots, infections, and allergic reactions, without any medical justification.
Unfortunately, this is a widespread problem. Bloomberg News reports that 11 hospitals in recent years have settled federal allegations that they inserted unnecessary heart stents simply so they could bill health programs such as Medicare for the procedure.
King’s Daughters is the latest hospital to face a federal investigation. Prosecutors have been looking into stenting practices at the facility’s heart center since 2011, Bloomberg reports.
There are many red flags. Bloomberg reports that King’s Daughters performed more stent procedures in 2011 than any other facility in Kentucky, including those in metropolitan areas like Louisville and Lexington.
Doctors in Ashland performed heart stent procedures on 27 out of every 1,000 Medicare patients in the area in 2010, or 3.5 times the national average, according to Bloomberg. “Ashland is a sore thumb sticking out that needs to be diagnosed,” a University of Louisville medical professor told Bloomberg. “Income appears to be driving medical decisions, not medical need.”
Contact a Kentucky unnecessary heart stents lawyer at Becker Law Office for help if you have suffered injuries or a worsened medical condition after undergoing a useless procedure. We have a legal team standing by to look into your case.
We will want to know if you recently had a heart catheterization at King’s Daughters Medical Center. If so, we will want to know whether a drug-coated or bare metal stent was placed in your coronary artery. We also will want to know if you are suffering any complications.
You only have a limited time to file a legal claim in an unnecessary heart stent case. So, you need to contact us right away so we can examine your case and determine your options.
Fill out this form to get in touch with us today and schedule a consultation. Your time is always valuable to us and we will respond as soon as we can.