Family awarded $1.6M

July 24, 2008

A Superior Court jury awarded $1.6 million to the husband and children of a Pennsylvania woman who died in 2003 after being prescribed the wrong heart medication.

Sandra D. Koch was prescribed 80 milligrams of Sotalol, which keeps the heart beating normally in people with certain rhythm disorders of the ventricles.
The drug was the wrong medication for someone on dialysis, said Timothy Lengkeek, the family’s attorney. Koch also was given four times the appropriate dosage for someone in that condition, he said.

“The drug is excreted from the body by the kidneys and if the kidneys don’t work and you are only getting dialysis every third day, the drug can build up in the body and cause a fatal heart arrhythmia, which is what she had kill her six days after she started the drug,” Lengkeek said. “There was overwhelming evidence that you don’t use this drug in this particular patient when there are other alternatives that were available that would have done the same thing.”

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Posted By Phoenix Accident Attorneys