Jonathan Gdanski, left; John Goran, center; and Steven Lury deliver opening statements in a medical malpractice trial against Holy Cross Hospital and a nurse practitioner over the heart attack death of a patient. Watch now.
Fort Lauderdale, FL— Attorneys Wednesday detailed the circumstances leading to the deadly heart attack a patient suffered while undergoing elective surgery, as a medical malpractice trial opened against a nurse practitioner and the hospital where the procedure was performed. Acosta v. Holy Cross Hospital, Inc., et al., CACE-24-08996.
Carlos Chalbaud, 52, suffered a fatal heart attack shortly after receiving anesthesia to undergo an elective spinal surgery. Chalbaud’s family contends nurse practitioner Glenda Thomas improperly cleared him for surgery before sufficient follow-up was completed on abnormal cardiac results. The family also claims that Holy Cross Hospital, in Fort Lauderdale, scheduled the surgery without appropriate clearance, and that the anesthesia team did not properly treat Chalbaud’s blood pressure drop in the minutes before his heart attack.
During his opening Wednesday, the family’s attorney, Jonathan Gdanski, of Schlesinger Law Offices, P.A., walked jurors through the events leading up to Chalbaud’s heart attack. Gdanski said evidence would show Thomas wrote a letter to Chalbaud’s surgeon, clearing him for the procedure, despite Chalbaud’s abnormal EKG results and Thomas knowing that Chalbaud had not visited the cardiologist she had referred him to.
Gdanski said that error was followed by Holy Cross scheduling Chalbaud for surgery without a cardiac clearance in the face of the abnormal EKG readings. And when Chalbaud was put under anesthesia and his blood pressure began to drop, Gdanski said, the anesthesia team failed to administer appropriate medication.
Ultimately, Gdanski said, an autopsy revealed Chalbaud had a severe blockage in two coronary arteries. He added that the blockages would have been discovered with a cardiac workup, which would have avoided his heart attack in the O.R.
“The family shouldn’t have had to find out on autopsy when the health care providers were obligated, from their own perspective, to find out through diagnostic testing,” Gdanski said.
But Holy Cross argues that its pre-surgical clearance procedures were appropriate, given the facts it knew, and that the anesthesiology team acted appropriately. During his opening, John Goran, of Hall Booth Smith, told jurors Chalbaud’s surgeon had ordered a more general pre-operative clearance, as opposed to a specific cardiac clearance, and that the document in its files was not enough to place it on notice that any additional clearance may be needed.
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And he added that Chalbaud’s blood pressure drop, without the anesthesiology team’s awareness of any cardiac risk factors, did not warrant earlier medical intervention by that team.
“When you start anesthesia, the evidence is going to show your blood pressure starts to go down,” Goran said. “But nobody knew of the time bomb that was sitting in his chest.”
Thomas’ attorney, Steven Lury, of La Cava Jacobson, told jurors in his opening statement that the nurse practitioner had acted appropriately in providing a properly worded and nuanced assessment to the surgeon under the circumstances. Lury said Chalbaud told Thomas he had been under the care of a cardiologist in Venezuela. And he said Thomas’ document to the surgeon indicated a variance in the EKG result, placing the surgeon on notice of the issue.
“After you’ve heard all the evidence, I’m going to ask you to use your common sense and determine that sending the letter that Glenda Thomas sent to [the surgeon] was in no way a deviation from the… standard of care,” Lury said.
Trial is expected to run between two and three weeks.
Email Arlin Crisco at acrisco@cvn.com.
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