Hospital Overdoses Pediatric Patients

Dan Frith

Contributor

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Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California put pediatric patients in danger of harm by giving them overdoses of the blood thinner Heparin,. The California Department of Public Health said the hospital gave three children 1,000 times the intended dosage of heparin on Nov. 18. Two of the children were actor Dennis Quaid's twins.

State regulators said the "violations caused, or were likely to cause, serious injury or death to the patients who received the wrong medication" and faulted the hospital for its "deficient practices" around administrating the drug.

Dennis Quaid and wife Kimberly Buffington have filed suit against Baxter Healthcare Corp., the makers of the drug Heparin. The couple's newborn twins Zoe Grace and Thomas Boone were mistakenly given a massive overdose of the anti-coagulant drug last month while hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. The Quaids' attorney says the twins "were very critical for a while," but appear to have recovered and "everything looks good." They filed suit because they want to prevent this from happening to any other children. The suit claims the Baxter is liable and negligent because the packaging of the 10 unit vial of Heparin looks almost exactly as the 10,000-units-per-milliliter vial of the drug.

For more information on this subject, please refer to the section on Medical Malpractice and Negligent Care.