Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

Leslie Fullerton provided the best care he could for his 29-month-old daughter Natalie with the medical equipment and medications provided him, but he still blames himself for her death. The little girl had already undergone a double-lung transplant and was recovering nicely when her father, following instructions of his daughter’s health care provider, used a pre-filled syringe to clean the tube implanted in Natalie’s chest to give her intravenous medication. Days later, Natalie became breathless and feverish as a bacteria infected her blood. Months later, Natalie died.

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Dusty Martin blamed himself after almost losing his 8-year-old son Michael to a bacterial infection. The boy is a hemophiliac who needs regular injections of medicine to reduce the risk of bleeding to death from a slight cut. Martin uses pre-filled syringes of saline and heparin to flush out the port in his son’s chest before administering his medication. But early last year, shortly after receiving his drugs, Michael began shaking. His temperature shot up to 106 and Martin rushed him to the hospital where he underwent emergency surgery.

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In an effort to ship heparin- and saline-filled syringes faster, workers at a facility in North Carolina failed to check sterility and then falsified manufacturing dates to make it appear those safeguards were followed, according to an Associated Press report. Those syringes, as it turned out, were tainted with a bacteria known as Serratia marcescens and may have lead to five deaths and hundreds of infections in those who received them.

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Pharmaceutical giant Baxter International faces yet another lawsuit, this time for playing a role in the distribution of a contaminated saline syringe that was used on a woman who afterward suffered serious medical problems that may have led to her death a year later, according to the Hays Daily News.

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The blood thinner heparin may be an effective treatment for Interstitial Cystitis (IC) according to the Interstitial Cystitis Association. IC is defined as pelvic pain, pressure or discomfort related to the bladder. It is typically associated with urinary frequency and urgency without infection or other pathology. It also is referred to as chronic pain syndrome (CPPS), painful bladder syndrome (PBS), and bladder pain syndrome (BPS).

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Tainted batches of heparin may have raised concerns with the general public, but a recent Reuters report suggests the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would rather focus on giving product promotion advice to companies and journal reprints to physicians than food and drug safety scares.

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