Plaintiff attorney Robert D. Vannah, of the law firm Vannah & Vannah, told the jury that Linda Cook was admitted to Sunrise Hospital for her second spine fusion surgery. However, during the surgery Ms. Cook lost blood pressure to her leg due to clotting.
The surgeons claimed that they requested access to an angiography suite to image Ms. Cook's leg, so they could locate any clots, but the hospital would not make the room available. As a result, according to the plaintiff, the surgeon spent more than five hours manually locating and removing clots. Nonetheless, despite these efforts, ischemia resulted in gangrene and neuropathy, and Ms. Cook's leg had to be amputated below the knee.
For the defense, Hall Prangle & Schoonveld's Ben Patterson told the jury that Sunrise hospital had state of the art imaging equipment, and a high quality angiography suite, both of which were available to Ms. Cook's surgeons. According to Mr. Patterson, the Quantum operating table that the surgeons were using for Ms. Cook had imaging capabilities, and the physicians' claim that they were denied access to adequate imaging facilities was simply untrue. Instead, Mrs. Cook was actually on the precise table requested by the physician. Mr. Patterson suggested that the surgeons should not have closed Ms. Cook and sent her to the recovery room when she had no pulse in her left foot.
CVN is webcasting Cook v. Sunrise Hospital live.