Maryland Blindness and Vision Loss Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Incredibly, there are an estimated 21 million adults in the country who have difficulty with their vision that cannot be corrected with glasses or contact lenses. Over 100,000 Maryland residents are disabled because of vision loss.

The vast majority of these injuries are not due to medical malpractice. But, still, there are too many eye injuries from mistakes that doctors should not make. This page discusses various scenarios where a physician’s error might cause blindness.

Failure to Screen for Retinopathy

Some infants are at risk for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). If a child is under a certain weight, many say less than 2.75 pounds, they should be screened for the risk of ROP. The screening is not overly intrusive. It verifies that the blood vessels in the retina are growing toward the front which is the path to normal vision. But abnormal growth can lead to retinal detachment, which can cause permanent blindness. This is avoidable with early screening and treatment.

Failure to Catch Diagnose Detached Retina

The interior of the eye is filled with a gel-like substance called vitreous. This substance helps the eye maintain its round shape. As we age, the vitreous shrinks and starts to pull away from the eye. This is generally not a big deal for most of us. But sometimes the vitreous fibers that are attached to the retina will pull so hard on it that they create the risk of a detached retina, which can jeopardize your vision. Too many people go to the eye doctor on an assembly line for their yearly checkup, and the doctor drives right by this grave threat to the patient’s vision.

Failure to Catch Intracranial Pressure

Increased intracranial pressure is caused by a rise in pressure in the brain’s cerebrospinal fluid or from increased pressure generated from within the brain itself. Left undiagnosed, this can cause a host of problems, including blindness, neurological problems, and death.

What can happen is a patient shows up to a primary care doctor or the emergency room with symptoms that should cause a reasonably prudent physician to rule out intracranial pressure with an MRI or CT scan. Of course, the symptoms of this problem overlap with many other ailments. So doctors miss the telltale signs of a potentially catastrophic problem.

Cataract Surgery Malpractice

Cataract surgery is the leading cause of medical negligence lawsuits against ophthalmologists. These claims often involve a capsular tear with a retained lens fragment. This may or may not be due to negligence. Usually, the problem with these capsular tears is not the tear itself, which can be managed with a pars plana vitrectomy. Instead, it is whether the tear is identified correctly and dealt with after it occurs. It may not be that this procedure needs to be performed immediately, but failing to come up with a plan for removing retained lens fragments is a cause of malpractice claims.

Another frequent source of litigation in these claims is the lack of informed consent. Doctors do three million of these procedures a year, and some of them simply go on autopilot when it comes to anything but the assembly line of operating on the patients. So too often, particularly with older patients, doctors do not lay out the options for the surgery and instead decide to “do what they think is best.”

Another problem with these surgeries is improperly placed or too much anesthesia, which can cause vision loss and blindness.

The Assembly Line Problem in Eye Care

Many vision loss malpractice lawsuits come down to something simple. The doctor did not look closely enough. That sounds too basic to be the root of a life-changing injury, right?  But most of the calls our lawyers get from victims who have blindness after a medical error boil down to just that.

Today, eye care has become fast medicine. The way to make money in our whacky healthcare system is volume. Patients are moved through clinics quickly. The chart gets skimmed. A tech runs some preliminary tests. By the time the ophthalmologist comes in, the diagnosis is half made and the questions are half answered. If the numbers look fine and there is no obvious emergency, the patient gets a pat on the back and a reminder to come back next year. What gets missed are the small details that only a careful exam or a longer conversation would have caught.

This is especially dangerous in cataract and glaucoma care. These are conditions that affect older adults, many of whom have other health issues or communication challenges. If the physician is on autopilot, there is a good chance they will miss signs of infection, increased intraocular pressure, or changes in visual acuity that suggest something more serious. Once those things are missed, the next chance to catch them might not come until it is too late.

The same problem shows up in emergency rooms and urgent care clinics. A patient with severe headache and blurry vision gets seen by a nurse practitioner, given ibuprofen, and sent home without imaging. No one rules out increased intracranial pressure. No one calls for an ophthalmology consult. And a week later, the patient is blind in one eye. Sometimes worse.

These are not unusual eye condition misdiagnosis stories. They are what happens when the system rewards speed and penalizes caution. The doctors are not always careless. But the process often is. That is where medical malpractice enters the picture. It is not just the decision in the moment that matters. It is the structure around that decision. If it does not allow time for real evaluation and follow-up, then it is not a structure that protects patients.

Additional Causes of Vision Loss from Medical Malpractice

Some of the most serious malpractice cases involving blindness do not come from dramatic mistakes in the operating room. They often begin with small misjudgments. A missed symptom. A delayed test. A doctor who failed to refer the patient to a specialist. These are not the errors that get a physician dragged before a board of inquiry. But they are the ones that ruin lives and show up in medical negligence lawsuits across Maryland and throughout the country.

Take eye infections, for example. Post-operative endophthalmitis is not new. Cataract surgery, LASIK, and other procedures carry infection risks that are well known. What turns a manageable infection into a life-altering injury is the delay in treatment. When a patient calls with redness, pain, or vision changes and gets told to wait for their next appointment, that is when the damage is done. By the time someone takes it seriously, it may be too late.

Another cause of malpractice claims is the failure to identify damage to the optic nerve. This is often seen in patients with underlying health conditions like diabetes or hypertension, but intracranial pressure, tumors, or vascular issues can also cause it. If a doctor does not take the time to examine visual field loss or papilledema and fails to order an MRI or refer the patient to a neuro-ophthalmologist, the clock runs out on their chance to intervene. Permanent vision loss becomes a probable outcome.

Cancer treatment can also lead to vision loss. Several chemotherapy drugs, including those used for breast cancer and leukemia, carry a risk of optic neuropathy or retinal damage. The oncologist may focus on managing the cancer while missing the early signs of vision impairment. These cases are not about the drug itself, but about the lack of communication between specialists. There should be a plan in place for regular eye evaluations, especially for patients reporting changes in vision. When that does not happen, legal claims follow.

Surgical errors unrelated to the eye can also result in blindness. Spinal surgeries that involve prolonged low blood pressure or accidental damage to the vertebral arteries have caused vision loss. Sinus surgeries have led to optic nerve trauma when surgeons stray too close to the orbital wall. These are rare outcomes but well-documented. They often appear in lawsuits because the blindness seems to come out of nowhere, and patients are not warned about the risks ahead of time.

One of the most frustrating categories of malpractice involves doctors who fail to act when patients report textbook symptoms. Sudden floaters, flashes of light, or a shadow in the field of vision should trigger concern about a retinal detachment. Instead, too many patients get told it is probably a migraine or something minor that will pass. Some never see a specialist until the damage is done. A twenty-minute delay in the emergency department can be enough to lose a retina.

These mistakes are not always the result of bad doctors. But they are the result of bad systems, rushed visits, and assumptions that patients do not know what they are talking about. In malpractice cases involving blindness, the defense always wants to talk about how rare these outcomes are. That misses the point. These are patients who had a chance to save their vision and lost it because no one took the time to connect the dots.

Getting a Lawyer for Your Case

Of course, these are just a few of the common medical mistake claims that lead to verdicts and settlements in blindness and other vision loss medical negligence cases.

Our law firm handles medical negligence cases involving death or serious injury. If you or a loved one has sustained a serious injury as a result of an error or mistake by a health care provider, call 800-553-8082 or get a free online consultation.

More Information on Medical Malpractice Claims

• We left out one that has its own page: LASIX Surgery Malpractice
• Information on the Value of Medical Mistake Cases
• Overview of Health Care Negligence Claims
• Homer’s Syndrome birth injuries