The use of epidural steroid injections to quickly alleviate neck and back pain has grown across the country, with close to 9 million Americans receiving the injection shots last year alone. However, the number of reports of paralysis and even death linked to the steroid injections has also been increasing. The Food and Drug Administration has now become concerned enough to begin a review of the safety of these steroid injections.

 

These injections often known as corticosteroids contain anti-inflammatory properties that provide immediate relief from neck and back pain, shoulder pain and inflammation in the hip, knee and other parts of the body. California product liability lawyers have found a number of reasons for this increase in the popularity of epidural painkilling shots. They're quick to administer, and have proved profitable for doctors in the form of reimbursements from Medicare and private insurance companies. In fact, epidural shots have become the single most popular way for doctors in America to treat neck and back pain.

 

According to research by the Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, the number of epidural injections administered to Medicare patients increased by a startling 159% over an 11-year period between 2000 and 2010. Americans are spending more money on painkilling treatments than ever before, amounting to a total of $300 million a year. Out of this, interventional procedures like epidurals account for about $23 billion a year.

 

According to doctors, the number of persons receiving epidural injections is rising not just because of the profitable reimbursements, but also because of an increasingly aging population that complains frequently of neck and back pain. The number of seniors around the country has been increasing, and is likely to spike in the next few years as the baby boomer population enters its 70s. The Food And Drug Administration has now confirmed that it is conducting a review of the safety of epidural injections.

Personal Injury Attorney, Patrick Bailey commented on the recent Today Show news story about carbon monoxide poisoning. 

 

"The nationwide ice rink exposure to carbon monoxide poisoning is worse than gross negligence, it is criminal negligence. The long term effects of carbon monoxide exposure are medically well established. Such exposure can result in crippling brain damage, including cognitive deficits, memory loss, inability to focus, confusion, anxiety and depression. Over 20,000 people are treated in emergency rooms across the country and the numbers are growing.

None of the enclosed ice rinks should be should be using gas powered ice sweepers. The toxic exposure to participants and spectators presents very serious health hazards that have the potential of lasting a life time."

 

See the full story below

 

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The Food and Drug Administration has chastised Pfizer for failing to include essential risk information about its drugs on its website. The agency's reprimand came after it received a tip about Pfizer's failure to include drug risk data.

 

Last year the FDA launched an initiative aimed at encouraging medical professionals, including physicians, nurses and pharmacists, to come forward with information about misleading advertisements placed by pharmaceutical companies. The action against Pfizer is the result of one such tip. The information that Pfizer allegedly concealed on its website involved the drug risks from a number of pharmaceutical products, including Chantix, the drug to prevent smoking, and Norvasc, a high blood pressure medication.

According to the FDA, the website contains links to pages dedicated to these drugs, but these pages contain no information about the drugs risks. Patients, who browse through the website looking for information on these drugs, would have no clue about the drug safety risks. For instance, Los Angeles pharmaceutical liability attorneys are aware of studies associating Chantix with an increased risk of suicide or suicidal tendencies. These risks are not mentioned on the website.

 

The FDA has been receiving a number of tips since the initiative began. Since May last year when it launched the initiative, the agency has received more than three times the average number of tips that it received earlier. In more than 80 of these cases, the agency was forced to take a closer look at the offending ad.

More tips could be generated if the agency publicized the program. Many doctors and pharmacists are not even aware that they are encouraged to report inaccurate prescription drug advertising.

The family of a six-year-old boy from Hemet, who was seriously injured after he fell into a fire pit, has filed a claim against the City of Huntington Beach. The accident occurred on April 17, when the boy had visited the Huntington City Beach. The boy had been flying a kite when he fell backwards into a deteriorating fire pit. The pit was located near Tower 1 and had a smoldering fire.

The boy suffered second and third degree burn injuries on his chest and arm. He had to spend weeks in surgical intensive care. According to his parents, his treatment is still ongoing, and he is required to see doctors every two weeks.

His parents allege that his injuries would never have occurred if the fire pit had been properly maintained. When officers arrived at the scene, they found that one side of the pit had collapsed down to sand level.

There are 167 fire pits in Huntington Beach. According to city officials, all of these pits are checked and cleaned every night. However, they claim it is not possible to check all the fire pits during the day, because of a shortage of staff.

This is the third fire pit-related lawsuit filed against Huntington Beach in the past few years. Two children, including a toddler suffered serious burn injuries in a similar accident in August 2009. The trial in that case is set for September.

Most fire pit accidents occur on government-owned property. Authorities need to make sure that fire pits are properly maintained, clean fire pits regularly, and install proper warning signs. Also, authorities must eliminate fall hazards from around fire pits. California fire pit injury lawyers often find that it is failure to take precautionary steps that cause fire pit injuries.

The Food and Drug Administration's fast track medical device approval process, also known as the 510(k) program, will be the subject of scrutiny this week at a Senate hearing.  The Government Accountability Office is scheduled to address concerns about misuse of the fast-track approval process for the approval of sensitive devices like hip joints and cardiac devices.

The Senate Special Committee on Aging will hear from the Government Accountability Office.  In 2009, the Government Accountability Office had cited the Food and Drug Administration for its misuse of the fast-track approval process.  According to the Government Accountability Office, the Food and Drug Administration has approved at least 67 medical devices through the fast-track process since 2009 alone. 

The concerns over the misuse of the 510(k) process have heightened since the nationwide scrutiny involving Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary, DePuy Orthopedics’ hip joint devices.  Last year, the company was forced to recall more than 93,000 hip implants for the high risk of revision surgery associated with these.  Thousands of people who were implanted with the devices have chronic complaints of consistent pain, swelling, and other complaints.  These patients were advised to have revision surgery to replace the devices. 

Studies have indicated that the revision surgery rate for these hip implants is approximately 12% over a period of five years.  Revision surgeries that have been performed on some of the patients have revealed horrifying signs of bone damage and degeneration.  Surgeons have found masses of dead tissue around the implant area.  These implants had been approved through the 510(k) process.

The 510(k) process was initially developed for the quick approval of power wheelchairs, catheters and other devices that were sufficiently similar to existing approved devices already in the market.  However, the Food and Drug Administration now uses the fast-track process to clear even critical and sensitive devices, like hip implants and cardiac devices.  The risks of defective medical devices slipping through the cracks of this flimsy program are too great for California pharmaceutical liability attorneys to ignore.

 

Five people, all prominent members of the Long Beach community were killed in a plane crash yesterday at Long Beach Airport (LGB).  One person was reported to be critically injured.

The private plane, a twin-engine turboprop aircraft had just departed from Long Beach to Salt Lake City at about 10:30 AM on Wednesday, when it turned back to the airport for unknown reasons.  There were six people on the plane which was on its way to a skiing trip in Park City, Utah.  The plane, a Beechcraft King Air, was returning to the airport after its departure in an attempt to land

The plane burst into flames upon impact, and firefighters rushed to the scene to extinguish the flames.  The plane was completely devastated, and the wreckage had to be cut through to extricate the dead passengers.  Out of the five confirmed dead, four were passengers and one was the pilot.  The lone survivor of the crash was 51-year-old real estate executive, Mike Jensen.  He remains in a critical condition at Long Beach Memorial Hospital.  However, doctors are optimistic about his recovery.  Authorities still don't know what caused the crash.

The four identified victims - Mark Bixby, Jeff Berger, Bruce Krall and Tom Dean were prominent members of the community.  Bixby was involved in several local city groups, like the YMCA and the Rotary Club, and had been a bicyclist advocate for many years.  He was a founding member of the Long Beach Bicycle Festival.  The plane was owned by Tom Dean, a local real estate developer who is also a business partner of another victim, Jeff Berger. 

This was the first plane crash at Long Beach Airport since 2005, when a single-engine private plane crashed into a building near the runway after takeoff, killing two people on board.  California plane crash attorneys expect more information about the causes of this tragedy to come from the sole survivor of the crash.

A slight increase in pedestrian accident fatalities in the first half of 2010 is puzzling to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, but not to many California accident lawyers. This week, the NHTSA reported that there had been an increase of .4% in pedestrian fatalities in the first half of last year. While the increase is small, the agency is puzzled because it comes after four straight years of declining pedestrian fatalities across the country.

The NHTSA believes this could be a sign that the overall traffic fatality decline of the past few years could be nearing its end. In fact, during the third quarter of 2010, there was an increase of 2.5% in traffic accident deaths. This is the first such increase after 17 consecutive quarters of declining traffic accident fatalities. The NHTSA is also focusing on undesirable pedestrian behaviors, including pedestrians walking while talking on the phone or texting. The agency also cites intoxicated pedestrians, as well as more pedestrians as the movement toward walkable communities gathers steam.

Transportation for America is a group that studies pedestrian safety, and in the past has published groundbreaking reports on pedestrian safety in America. According to the group, one of the biggest factors in this spike in accident fatalities is the dependence on high-speed arterial roads in neighborhoods. According to estimates, more than half of all fatalities occur on such high-speed arterial roads. Unfortunately, urban planning and design in the US has been auto-centric to a large extent, and this has contributed to designs that spell trouble for pedestrians.

Los Angeles personal injury lawyers would stress on greater motorist awareness about pedestrian safety, use of sting campaigns and crackdowns to emphasize pedestrian rights, in order to prevent these injuries.

Defective, malfunctioning and worn out hardware and components are the root cause of several of the aviation crashes that California plane crash lawyers come across. The National Transportation Safety Board has issued a recommendation urging complete and detailed inspections of emergency transmitters in all general aviation aircraft. The recommendation stems from a private plane crash in Alaska last year that killed Sen. Ted Stevens and three other people.

The plane crash that killed the Republican Sen. involved a float plane that was transporting members of a fishing party. The NTSB believes that poor visibility was a factor for the plane going down in remote wooded terrain. Four people died in the crash. The injured survivors had to wait for five hours until rescue teams spotted them from the air.

According to the search teams, they were unable to detect a signal from the emergency transmitter. It later turned out that the transmitter had broken off from the antenna, and therefore, was not able to transmit a signal. The emergency transmitter is meant to transmit signals that can be received by rescue teams, facilitating faster and quicker rescue.

According to investigators, the emergency transmitter in the crash that killed Sen. Stevens, was meant to be inspected every year. However, there were no specific references about the condition of the device mentioned in the plane's maintenance records, although there are requirements for such details to be noted.

The National Transportation Safety Board is asking the Federal Aviation Administration to mandate regular and specific inspections for existing emergency transmitter systems. The federal agency has called on the Federal Aviation Administration to evaluate the need for even tighter safety requirements in the future.

 

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has announced tough new crib safety laws that will be warmly welcomed by California product liability lawyers. The new rules include a complete ban of the drop side crib design. Last week, the CPSC voted unanimously to ban drop side cribs, and to require manufacturers to manufacture sturdier stronger cribs. The drop side crib ban is of special importance to California product liability attorneys. These have been traced to approximately 32 confirmed reports of infant deaths from strangulation, entrapment, suffocation and falls, over the past decade.

CPSC chief Inez Tenenbaum says that these new laws are some of the strongest in the world. She has made crib safety part of her agenda ever since she took over the reins of the CPSC. The CPSC chief has gone beyond banning the drop side crib design, to initiate a sleep safety initiative that encourages parents to put their children to sleep on their backs, and reduce the risks of crib suffocation hazards.

The new drop side crib ban applies not just to cribs used in homes, but also those used in day care centers and hotels. Commercial establishments will also have to replace the cribs with a fixed side design. According to the CPSC, commercial establishments would likely have to incur expenses of more than $460 million to replace an approximate 935,000 cribs.

However, the CPSC has been lenient in extending the deadline, to give crib manufacturers time to step up production to meet the expected increased demand for fixed side cribs. Besides, the extended deadline will give commercial establishments and day care centers more time to comply with the new laws.

The new rules don't only apply to crib design, but also mandate that crib manufacturers equip their cribs with tighter hardware as well as reliable mattress supports.

 

Carbon monoxide poisoning is the biggest silent killer in the United States. Last week, five teenagers died in a Florida hotel room, and carbon monoxide poisoning is being blamed for their deaths. The five friends were found in a motel room in Hialeah Florida, and had apparently gathered to celebrate the birthday of one of the teenagers. The maid at the hotel discovered the bodies and called 911.

Fire crews conducted tests on the air in the room, and found high concentrations of carbon monoxide. The room in which the bodies were found is located over the garage. The group’s car was found still running in the garage.  A door to the staircase leading to the garage was left open and allowed carbon monoxide from the vehicle’s exhaust to enter the room.  Toxicology reports confirmed the group had died of accidental CO poisoning.

Unfortunately, death from carbon monoxide poisoning is all too common. According to California carbon monoxide poisoning lawyer Patrick Bailey, this is a tragedy which occurs too frequently. According to Bailey, “most motels don't have carbon monoxide detectors, and many do not conduct annual inspections, which is a recognized minimum safety standard.” According to Bailey, “this simply should never have happened. Five families’ lives have been devastated because of the nation's number-one silent killer:  CO poisoning.”

Carbon monoxide is a colorless, tasteless, odorless gas that is formed as a result of burning material containing carbon. It is often found in car exhaust, but can also be produced by common household appliances like water heaters, charcoal grills, generators, propane stoves and wall heaters.” The risks of carbon monoxide poisoning come when these dangerous fumes accumulate in confined spaces.