USA Today reports a federal judge has upheld most of the $8.5 million he awarded in a medical misdiagnosis case.
In 2002, a doctor at Scott Air Force Base, in southern Illinois, misdiagnosed the ex-wife of a captain when she came to him with a rash on her arm and he assumed she was an addict wanting prescription drugs.
The rash turned out to be a flesh eating bacteria. The woman lost the use of her arm and was awarded $8.5 million by a federal judge.
The government requested the award for damages be cut by over $1 million, but the judge let most of the original award stand and cut the damages by less than $63,000.
Medical malpractice is essentially when health care professionals make a mistake that harms the patient they are supposed to help.