A Fort Lauderdale surgeon’s mistake caused his patient’s stroke, state complaint says
Bad placement of a catheter by a Fort Lauderdale doctor caused a patient to have a stroke, the Florida Department of Health alleges in a complaint against the doctor.
The complaint, filed Oct. 25, differs from the patient’s lawsuit in describing the alleged mistake in 2018 by Dr. Francisco Bermudez at Holy Cross Hospital, now Holy Cross Health.
Bermudez hasn’t answered an email from the Miami Herald or a message left at his office. The lawsuit was settled in 2022 with each side paying its own attorneys’ fees.
An “infected peritoneal dialysis catheter” brought the patient to Holy Cross on Nov. 5, 2018, the complaint said. The University of Colorado describes it as a “catheter ... placed in the abdominal cavity, permitting dialysis fluid to be instilled into, and then removed from, the abdomen.”
The lawsuit said the patient came in for the “removal and replacement of a hemodialysis Quinton catheter,” which, the National Kidney Foundation describes as “a soft tube that is placed in a large vein, usually in your neck.”
Both the lawsuit and the complaint say Bermudez put the new Quinton catheter in a carotid artery, which are major blood vessels in the neck, causing a stroke.
The complaint accuses Bermudez of a more egregious error than the lawsuit, and says the standard of care required Bermudez “to ensure that a post operative chest X-ray was ordered to confirm proper placement of the Quinton catheter.”
In Bermudez’s lawsuit defense filing by Marci Strauss and Jonathan Lynn of La Cava & Jacobson, he says any care and treatment was, “at all times, consistent with the standards of care prevailing among similarly-trained physicians...” and “the sole and proximate cause of any injury (to the patient) was the direct result of (the patient’s) own negligence...”
According to the Florida Department of Health’s license profile, Bermudez has been licensed since May 22, 2005 and has no previous disciplinary issues. The patient survived the procedure.
This story was originally published November 20, 2024 at 11:41 AM.
