Antiseptic Sensitivity: Betadine Use on Patient Who Reported Allergy Is Negligence, Court Says

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

July 1998

  Quick Summary: The patient reported a Betadine allergy which was charted.  Betadine should not have been used without a highly compelling reason.

  Use of Betadine on a person who is sensitive is likely to cause inhibited healing of a wound and may cause it to split open.

  Use of an specific substance despite the patient reporting an allergy shows a basic lack of care. COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA, 1998.

 

   The patient filed a lawsuit against his physician, the physician’s assistant and the hospital. The lawsuit claimed they applied Betadine to his leg where venous material was harvested for his coronary artery bypass surgery. The patient’s suit alleged Betadine was used during and after the procedure even though he had reported a Betadine allergy and it was charted.

   The suit claimed the Betadine prolonged and complicated the healing of the surgical wound and made debridement and skin grafting procedures necessary.

   The Court of Appeals of Iowa ruled there were valid grounds for a medical negligence lawsuit against all of the caregivers whom this patient had named as defendants.

   The court said the patient did not need a medical expert witness to prove it is negligent for care providers to use a substance with a patient to which the patient is sensitive, assuming the caregivers are not able to show a compelling need to have done what they did.

   The court ruled a patient does need an expert to show a cause-and-effect relationship between Betadine use and post-operative problems with wound healing. However, having so ruled, the court accepted a statement from a physician who had never treated or even seen this patient, that Betadine can cause problems with wound healing in patients who are sensitive, and that if this patient was sensitive, and Betadine was used, and wound healing was compromised, Betadine must have been the culprit. Bazel v. Mabee, 576 N.W. 2d 385 (Iowa App., 1998).