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LOS ANGELES - Actor Dennis Quaid and his wife sued the makers of a blood thinner called heparin Tuesday after their twin newborns were inadvertently given massive doses of it at a hospital.
The product liability lawsuit, filed in Chicago, seeks at least US$50,000 in damages. It claims that Baxter Healthcare Corp., based in Illinois, was negligent in packaging different doses of the product in similar vials.
The accident came after three Indianapolis infants died from overdoses last year.
While still hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, one of the United States' top hospitals, Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace Quaid were given vials of heparin that were 1,000 times stronger than what was prescribed.
The twins are home and "appear to be doing well," said Susan E. Loggans, the attorney who filed the lawsuit. "The Quaids are a religious family and they really believe the prayers of the public saved their kids."
"Apparently, they're going to be fine now," she said, but she declined to otherwise comment on their medical conditions.
"The point of this case is to save other children from this fate. They're not looking for money," Loggans said.
The Quaids did not sue Cedars-Sinai, which acknowledged after the news broke that a "preventable error" had resulted in three patients receiving vials containing 10,000 units per milliliter of heparin instead of vials with a concentration of 10 units per milliliter.
Two of the patients needed a drug that reverses the effects of heparin, the hospital said.
- AP
