Bedsores - Nursing Home Abuse Lawyers in Florence, KY
In many cases, elderly residents of nursing homes must remain in bed, or in wheelchairs throughout the day. In some cases, without proper attention and repositioning, these seniors may develop bedsores over time, which can result in serious or life-threatening conditions. The lack of mobility and consistent pressure on one area of the body, can leave already thin, fragile skin of elderly residents subject to bedsores.
Bedsores are completely preventable, and develop due to neglect or abuse of residents in nursing homes. If you feel your elderly loved one in a nursing home developed bedsores due to lack of appropriate care by the nursing home staff, you may have the legal right to pursue a claim for justice on behalf of your elderly loved one.
Symptoms of Bedsores
If your elderly loved one in a nursing home exhibits any of the following symptoms, you should consider whether or not they may suffer from elder abuse or neglect.
Bedsores occur in areas that cover bony parts of the body that do not have a great deal of muscle or fat. Some of the symptoms of bedsores include large sores where a person may place pressure in bed, such as the back or the side of the head, heels, shoulder blades, the lower back, tailbone, spine, or ankles, and knees.
For those residents that remain in wheelchairs for most of the day, bedsores often develop in the arms, legs, and hips where they touch the wheelchair consistently.
Advancement of Bedsores
Nursing homes have the duty and responsibility to continually reposition nursing home residents to ensure the prevention of bedsores developing.
Failure to reposition residents can ultimately be the result of nursing home abuse or neglect. While bedsores often begin as red areas, if left untreated, a bedsore may actually remove the top layer of skin.
A bedsore will then develop into an actual open wound or blister. Again, at this point, a bedsore remains easily treatable with some medication and repositioning. Without proper attention, these bedsores will then develop into infectious wounds that begin to carry a foul order and include a great deal of pain for the elderly resident. When a bedsore remains untreated at this stage it may develop into sepsis, which is an infection that can cause death.
Nursing Home Abuse
Bedsores should never develop into serious infections that result in hospitalization or death. While minor bedsores may occur in bedridden or wheelchair-bound patients, they should never develop into infectious wounds leading to sepsis, or even squamous cell carcinoma, a deadly type of cancer resulting from chronic wounds.
Nursing homes that neglect or intentionally leave residents unattended without any type of repositioning have failed in their obligations to their residents to provide appropriate care.
Contact an Experienced Nursing Home Abuse Attorney Today
If your elderly loved one suffered serious bedsores as a resident of a nursing home, you may have the legal right to pursue justice on their behalf. You may have had to take your loved one to a hospital, or provide extensive medical treatments regarding bedsores that became septic or seriously infected.
Contact the experienced nursing home abuse attorneys at Dallas & Turner, PLLC to help you understand how you can pursue justice on behalf of your loved one, and receive compensation for any medical bills or pain and suffering that they may have endured.
Your loved one deserved to be treated with dignity and respect. Contact an experienced Kentucky attorney today at 859-630-0666, or fill out our FREE online case submission form to schedule a FREE consultation.