$3.1M Verdict: Animating Spinal Cord Injury After Premature Discharge from Hospital

The patient in this case suffered the injury to his spinal cord after he fell, struck his face on furniture, and landed on his shoulder sustaining immediate onset of pain in his neck and shoulder.

He was transported to the ER with neck pain, shoulder pain, and the inability to feel or move his lower extremities. The doctor performed a CT scan that ruled out an acute fracture, but the doctor chose not to perform an MRI, which would have revealed the presence of spinal cord compression and soft tissue injury.

Despite the patient’s clearly abnormal neurologic symptoms, the doctor discharged him later that night in a wheelchair, unable to stand on his own.

The patient’s weakened legs worsened significantly overnight to the point where he reported that he “couldn’t move them at all.” His right arm became weaker, his neck and shoulder pain continued, and he was unable to walk or stand. When he was presented to the orthopedics office for his scheduled visit the next day, he was immediately rushed to the emergency room because of his “observed condition.”

An MRI revealed obvious evidence of spinal cord injury with a large disc herniation at the C3-4 level. Despite extensive rehabilitation efforts, the patient is now a C4 ASIA C quadriplegic with neurological loss of bowel and bladder control.

The first animation demonstrates how the spinal cord normally operates. Establishing the normal anatomy provided jurors with prerequisite knowledge for understanding how disruptions to this anatomy could affect areas of the body elsewhere. 

​Singals that move muscles travel from the brain through the cervical spinal cord to the rest of the body. The spinal cord is protected by spinal vertebrae that surround the cord, and between these vertebrae are structures called invertrebral discs. The spinal cord travels down the cervical spine through a spinal canal formed by this vertebrae.

Understanding how this delicate system is built and functions helped jurors see and recognize how a significant disc bulge could cause major damage to other parts of the body.

The second animation was built to achieve the last two visual objectives: demonstrating how the Plaintiff’s spinal cord was obviously damaged, and comparing the outcome of the Defendant’s choices to the outcome the Plaintiff would have experienced had timely treatment been administered.

​The animation opens with an illustration of the disc herniation and the spinal cord compression, based on the MRI. It then transitions into a comparison of what happened versus what should have happened. Had surgery been administered when the patient was admitted to the hospital, the damage to the spinal cord could have been alleviated (on the right). But the Defendant doctor’s decision to delay this surgery aggravated the injury to the spinal cord and made it much worse, resulting in paralysis.

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