Irving Facility's Lawyer Says Care is High Quality

By Anne Belli, Staff Writer, The Dallas Morning News

No one expected Glen Perkins to die when he went to Irving Community Hospital two years ago for what was expected to be a simple routine surgery on a fractured ankle.

The veteran state trooper, who had twisted his left foot on a curb just a few days before, wasn't even supposed to stay overnight.

But almost immediately after doctors gave him general anesthetic on May 2, 1990, the 53 year-old man went into cardiac arrest. He died 40 minutes later.

"Glen was the healthiest person I had every known", said his widow, Kittie H. Perkins, 49. "He was always the first to get up and go have fun. He had never even been in the hospital before. I just know that Glen should not have died".

Wednesday, Mrs. Perkins and the couple's four grown children filed a $10 million medical malpractice lawsuit against the hospital, two doctors there and a nurse.

The family alleges that the Irving Community Hospital staff failed, among other things to take an X-ray of Trooper Perkins before giving him anesthetic. If they had, they would have detected an inflammation of his lungs, a condition that quickly worsened and turned fatal after he was anesthetized, an attorney for the family said.

"It's absolutely unthinkable that a healthcare provider would not follow basic, standard procedures on what would be considered minor, routine surgery", said the Dallas lawyer, John Mallios.

The two doctors in the case, orthopedic surgeon James Frost and anesthesiologist Gonzalo Lopez, could not be reached for comment, nor could the nurse, Alice Justice.

An attorney for the hospital, now called the Irving Healthcare System, said he had not seen a copy of the suit, so he could not comment. However, he said that he was familiar with the Perkins case and that the suit would be vigorously defended.

"I believe we deliver very high quality care here at Irving, and we will fully defend this case", said attorney J. Scott Waters IV.

Mr. Waters later said that Irving Healthcare had recently been listed among the top 10 percent of hospitals in the country by the Joint Commissions on Hospital Accreditation.

Mr. Mallios said patients aren't always X-rayed before general anesthetic is administered. However, several signs indicated that Trooper Perkins, who had worked for the Texas Department of Public Safety for 21 years, should have been X-rayed, the lawyer said.

For instance, the trooper told doctors that he had been a longtime pipe smoker, Mr. Mallios said. Also, he was older than 50, told the nurse he was getting over a cold and had a body temperature 1 degree above normal, the lawyer said.

Speaking quietly and holding back tears, Mrs. Perkins said Wednesday that neither she nor her husband knew he had the intermittent lung condition when he went to the hospital. She said that the surgery, to place a pin in his broken ankle, was considered routine and that they expected to go home that evening.

Mrs. Perkins said she was eating a sandwich in the hospital cafeteria less than an hour after her husband went into surgery when she was paged. A group of nurses escorted her from the cafeteria to the surgery floor, where she was met by a chaplain.

The Irving woman then was led to a room full of doctors, where one told her: "There has been a catastrophe. These things just don't happen", she said.

Mrs. Perkins said those words run through her mind every morning when she awakens. She said that if she or her husband had any idea the surgery would be risky, they would not have gone through with it, broken ankle or not.

"I would have carried him around the rest of his life if it meant he would live", she said.

Staff writer Steve Scott contributed to this report.