You would think that having automated defibrillators everywhere would really help save lives, but the latest research seems to indicate this is not the case, at least in hospitals. Yes, that’s right–the old-school, low-tech defibrillators seem to have saved more lives than the fancy, supposedly easy-to-use, automated external defibrillators (AEDs).

In 2000 a committee with the American Heart Association made a blanket recommendation that hospitals should equip themselves with AEDs. It turns out this wasn’t really based on any actual evidence or research but just a general belief that, well, OF COURSE lives will be saved if new defibrillators that more people can operate are on hand. one estimate suggests, though, that nearly a thousand patients die each year because of the equipment.

Over in Mississippi two lawsuits have been filed against Mississippi Organ Recovery Agency (MORA) and the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMC) over two kidney transplants from a single donor. It turns out the donor had been infected with encephalitis. Of the recipients of the donor’s two kidneys, one died less than three months after receiving a kidney, and the other suffers from partial blindness and continued poor health. The lawsuits contend the kidneys are to blame.

The “July effect” is not sunburn or dehydration but instead refers to the increase in fatalities and medical mishaps at teaching hospitals.Why? Well, a batch of new and inexperienced residents hits teaching hospitals every July. According to a study by the Journal of General Internal Medicine, teaching hospitals can see a 10 percent increase in fatalities in July, most of them a result of errors in prescribing and administering medications.

The popular prescription diabetes drug Avandia will only be available in very limited distribution as of November 18, 2011. Avandia has been on the market for more than a decade, but a 2007 study indicated that it increased heart attack risk in patients with type 2 diabetes by about 40 percent. Also in 2007 David Graham, a drug safety expert with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), reported that Avandia had caused heart-related problems in 66,000-200,000 people.

Children’s Hospital in Seattle seems to be suffering from a few too many nurses making critical errors. Two nurses there have just been charged with unprofessional conduct and violation of the minimum standard of care by the Washington Department of Health. Apparently the errors made by these two nurses were but a few among quite a few other medication errors that have caught the critical eye of investigators.

Nurse Linda Kimman caused a patient in the ER to go into cardiac arrhythmia when she accidentally administered epinephine through an IV tube. Nurse Beth Yost apparently decided on her own to give a sick infant three medications. The infant later died, but the medications were not found to be the cause.

There’s a new measurement tool in town for assessing hospital errors and safety, and it’s finding that there are more errors than we originally thought. In fact, according to this tool, a third of patients in the U.S. will be victims of a medical error during hospital stays. The new tool was developed at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Massachusetts. Old tools include voluntary reporting by hospitals and an assessment method developed by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHR).

Legacy Health of Portland implemented a new initiative two years ago with the aim of lowering infection rates and patient deaths, and it looks like they have succeeded. According to an article in the Oregonian, infection rates have dropped by about 45 percent, and patient deaths declined about 14 percent over the past two years. The iniative, labeled “Big Aims,” was undertaken at six hospitals and involved all employees, from housekeepers to doctors.Staff members were instructed to follow safety checklists.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is investigating tainted IV nutrition fluid that may have contributed to the deaths of nine patients in Alabama. So far no evidence directly linking the bacteria to the deaths has been found, but the investigation is still young. Some nineteen patients in six hospitals in Alabama were found to have a bacterial infection, specifically Serratia marcescens bacteremia, in their blood. Of those nineteen, nine died.

The contaminated IV nutrition in question, TPN, or total perenteral nutrition, was from one pharmacy, Meds IV. The pharmacy has since recalled all of the compounded IV fluids it produced and has also discontinued production as the CDC investigates. TPN is administered to patients via an IV using a catheter.

Recently I blogged about Birgilio Marin-Fuentes, the man who drove himself to the Portland Adventist Medical Center as he suffered a heart attack. When he arrived at the hospital parking lot, he lost consciousness and crashed. Some police officers were there and tried to help him. One officer ran the short distance to the hospital emergency room seeking help but was told to call 911. Nobody from the emergency room came out to the parking lot to assist until an ambulance had been summoned via 911. Marin-Fuentes later died. The hospital defended its actions by stating that it was simply following protocol.

It sounds like the plot to a bad made-for-television movie: a doctor flees the country after he is sued for malpractice. Sadly, it is truth, not fiction. Mark Weinberger was a surgeon in Indiana who was on the lam for more than five years. He was caught in Italy in late 2009. He was apparently living on a mountain in a tent.

Weinberger faced a medical negligence civil lawsuit in 2004 for failing to diagnose a patient’s lung cancer. The patient was 50 years old and died of the lung cancer. Rather than diagnosing the cancer, Weinberger performed allegedly unnecessary surgeries. He then fled the country to avoid the trial. Now that Weinberger is back in the United States, he will finally be tried.