Loss of Blood Flow to Spinal Cord During Neck Surgery

A middle-aged man awoke from a spinal neck surgery, and when anesthesia wore off he could not move from the chest down. Tragically, his paralysis was permanent and no one at the hospital could tell him what had caused the injury, which the doctors attributed to a possible stroke in his spinal cord occurring during the operation. He hired Mark Clore to investigate, and Mark ultimately sued the surgeon, anesthesiologist, and hospital, and was backed up by nationally renowned expert witnesses he hired. Together they proved that the combination of the anesthesiologists’ failure to properly monitor the blood pressure of the patient--when surgery was being done in a seated position and gravity reduced the amount of oxygenated blood at the neck level of the spinal cord (which was pumped by and only measured at heart level)--together with pressure from the neurosurgeon on the spinal cord at the area of the operation, caused the oxygenated blood in the neck spinal cord to get far too low.  Mark Clore tried the case in Houston, Texas, and achieved one of, if not the, largest jury verdicts in Houston that year against in a medical malpractice case.

• Practice Areas
  Anesthesia Errors
• Attorney
  Mark D. Clore
• Outcome
  Confidential Jury Verdict