In a lawsuit filed today, actor Dennis Quaid and his wife sued Baxter Healthcare Corp., the maker of the blood thinner, heparin. The Quaid’s newborn twins and a third patient at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center were mistakenly given doses of heparin that were 1,000 times stronger than the intended dose. The product liability lawsuit, filed in Chicago, alleges the heparin was unreasonably dangerous because the large dose vials were packaged and sold with labels that were difficult to distinguish from the labels on the small dose vials. A similar dosage killed three infants at a hospital in Indianapolis last year. The Quaids did not sue the hospital (which admitted the error) and are not looking for money from the lawsuit. They hope to save other children from this preventable error.
For more information on this subject, please refer to the section on Drugs, Medical Devices and Implants.
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