May 25—Hawaii's U.S. District Court on Tuesday awarded $29.5 million to a local military family in the largest medical malpractice judgment against Tripler Army Medical Center for a 2016 incident involving their then-month-old child.
Hawaii's U.S. District Court on Tuesday awarded $29.5 million to a local military family in the largest medical malpractice judgment against Tripler Army Medical Center for a 2016 incident involving their then-month-old child.
In September 2016, John and Laura Warren rushed their daughter to Tripler when their baby's belly became distended and tight, and she turned blue from the bellybutton down. Shortly after arriving at the hospital, she stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated.
"They told me a lot of things, but there's a lot of things they didn't tell me, " John Warren said.
Some staff at the hospital suspected she was suffering from a midgut volvulus, a condition occurring in infants where the intestine twists, causing a loss of blood flow. It's a serious condition in infants that can lead to death or significant and permanent medical complications if it's not immediately treated. The child did have a volvulus. But doctors didn't check.
"Instead, they waited 19 hours, " said Loretta Sheehan, one of the attorneys who represented the Warrens. "And then when she was near death, they sent her by ambulance over to Kapiolani Medical Center. ... They found that about 90 to 95 % of her small intestine was dead, 'necrotic' was the word they used, so they spent the next five months in the hospital. She had a total of about 14 surgeries."