Nashville Personal Injury Blog

About two to three children out of every 1,000 in the United States suffer from cerebral palsy. It affects people of all ethnicities, sexes and socioeconomic groups. Cerebral palsy is a physical disability of the brain that causes many hardships, both financial and emotional, for children and their families.

Types:

There are three different types of cerebral palsy. The first is spastic cerebral palsy in which the child is stiff and has difficulty with movement. The second type is athetoid cerebral palsy where the child has uncontrolled and involuntary movements. The last type is ataxic cerebral palsy where the child has difficulty with balance and depth perception.

Any parent of a young, newly-minted driver knows that teen drivers are a high-risk group - and as a result, adding them to a car insurance policy can double, or even triple, the rates that they pay.

In order to determine why this is the case, the U.S National Institutes of Health (NIH) conducted a study that observed the driving habits of 42 new teenage drivers in Virginia, as well as their parents, for 18 months. Before the study began, the NIH installed participants' cars with internal and external cameras, GPS devices, and systems that collect data on when the cars accelerated and how many miles the cars were driven.

After observing participants for 18 months, the NIH found that:

A former Army mechanic from Ohio was recently awarded $275,000 in a medical malpractice case after a VA surgical team left two 11 x 14 inch towels in his body after removing a cancerous kidney.

The surgical oversight required 47-year-old Robert Sanner to undergo multiple follow-up exams, including a CT scan that revealed the error, then two additional surgeries ─ first to remove the towels and later to repair an incisional hernia caused by the second surgery, according to an account on Outpatientsurgery.net. Sanner missed a year of work due to the surgical errors and was left with a larger, thicker scar.

According to research conducted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), drivers of commercial vehicles are three times more likely to be involved in a crash if they are reaching for a cell phone or similar object. That accident risk increases to six times more likely if the drivers are dialing. It is clear; when drivers of commercial vehicles such as large trucks and buses take their eyes off the roadways, the outcomes can be deadly.

To decrease distracted driving accidents stemming from cell phone use, the FMCSA and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) have issued a joint final rule banning drivers from use of hand-held cell phones while operating commercial motor vehicles.

The safety of hybrid cars has been called into question over the past few years, as studies determined that their quiet nature endangers pedestrians. Unlike noisy gas-only models, hybrids are so quiet that pedestrians can't hear them coming.

In fact, this hazard prompted Congress and President Obama to mandate that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) set noise mandates for hybrid vehicles, as part of the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act.

A recent study published in the Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology Journal focused on the number of doctors and nurses who do not wash their hands before and after using rubber or latex gloves. Skipping this simple step can cause harm to both healthcare workers and patients. This came as a surprise to many in the medical community.

Although many believe that latex gloves create an impermeable barrier to germs and bacteria, this is a myth.

A new study conducted by researchers at Harvard University and published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine shows that patients have better medical outcomes when they are treated by physicians who consult computerized medical-information when making important treatment decisions. Computerized medical-information allows physicians to access information important to their patients' care that they might not otherwise be aware of, such as new medical data or results from recently released studies.

The study compared Medicare beneficiary data from 2004 to 2006 from 1,107 hospitals that used computerized medical-information with data from 2,305 hospitals that did not.

An infant should be safe in his or her own crib. But when cribs are not designed and manufactured properly, they can cause serious children's injures - including death.

One particular problem with crib construction led to a product recall this month. Drop-side cribs that were imported from Taiwan by J.C. Penney were the subject of a recall because the drop-side rails have a propensity to become detached due to a malfunction.

This malfunction can create an unexpected space on the side of the crib, causing strangulation or suffocation of an infant. Infants can also fall out of the crib through such a space and be injured upon hitting the floor.

Suffocation and strangulation are also risks with cribs that contain crib bumpers. This month, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued guidelines saying that bumper pads in cribs should never be used.

The reason for the recommendation is straightforward. If infants become trapped in the bumpers, they often do not have the strength or sufficiently developed motor skills to turn their heads and keep breathing.