John J. MacInerney
A Cook County jury last week awarded $1.2 million to the estate of a woman who died after a local anesthetic stopped her heart during a procedure.
Plaintiff Tarita Stewart sued anesthesiologist Ruperto Buscaino in 2014, alleging that during an October 2006 procedure on Stewart’s mother Barbara Jeffrey, Buscaino failed to take steps that would prevent the injection of the local anesthetic directly into a blood vessel instead of surrounding tissue.
Jeffrey, who was 63 at the time, visited Holy Cross Hospital for a surgery to remove plaque from her right carotid arteries. She had the same procedure completed on her left carotid arteries two months earlier with no complications, said John J. MacInerney, an associate at Hofeld and Schaffner who represented Jeffrey’s estate.
“They do this under local anesthetic,” he said. “That way, the cardiologist, when they’re actually doing the procedure, can talk to the patient and during the procedure and make sure everything is OK.”
Buscaino used bupivacaine to numb Jeffrey’s neck. Given its toxicity, MacInerney said, it is important that the anesthetic be injected only in tissue. Injecting it into a blood vessel sends it through a patient’s bloodstream and to his or her heart in one-minute circulation intervals.
“You don’t want this because the heart has nerves, and it will do the same thing to the heart,” he said. “It will numb the nerves and it will make the heart not conduct itself properly.”
Anesthesiologists typically avoid that potential issue by aspirating the syringe before committing to an injection site — inserting it, then slightly drawing the plunger back, MacInerney said.
“The anesthetic you’re putting in is clear, but if you pull that back and see red, that’s blood; so you just pull the needle out and start over because you don’t want to be in a blood vessel,” he said.
Of Buscaino’s three injections along Jeffrey’s proposed suture line, he aspirated the needle once. Within minutes, MacInerney said, Jeffrey became agitated, short of breath and fell under cardiac arrest.
Physicians successfully resuscitated her, MacInerney said, but she suffered brain damage and fell into a coma following her symptoms. Jeffrey died the next morning from respiratory failure.
Buscaino denied the allegations in Stewart’s lawsuit — which also originally named the hospital before it was dismissed. He contended the incident happened because of a pre-existing blood clot that dislodged from her leg and traveled to her lung, MacInerney said.
The anesthesiologist also presented an expert pulmonologist during the five-day trial before Cook County Circuit Judge Lorna E. Propes who contended a pulmonary embolism caused her injuries and death and her reaction took longer than what’s typical from a reaction to the anesthetic, he said.
“Although, the defendant himself said the reaction started one to two minutes after he completed the last injection,” he said. “During trial, they tried to stretch that out to more in the neighborhood of 15 minutes,” MacInerney said.
Cunningham Meyer & Vedrine P.C. principals David C. Burtker and Peter J. Strauss, who represented Buscaino, could not be reached for comment.
The parties proceeded to trial without engaging in any settlement negotiations or mediations, MacInerney said. But during the jury deliberation, her estate rejected the defendant’s offers to settle for either $100,000, then $200,000 or to enter a high-low agreement, he said.
The jury on Wednesday awarded $400,000 to each of Jeffrey’s three surviving adult children for loss of society, grief and sorrow and mental suffering.
MacInerney said Jeffrey’s family is pleased with the jury’s verdict.
“When I told them of the result, they said they were happy for their mother who had passed — that this gave them a finding in her favor that what happened should not have happened,” he said.
Hofeld and Schaffner partner Howard Schaffner also represented Jeffrey’s estate.
The case is Tarita Stewart v. Ruperto Buscaino, M.D., 14 L 752.