Malpractice suit filed against clinic that treated comic Joan Rivers

Joan Rivers’ daughter has filed a malpractice lawsuit against the Manhattan outpatient clinic that treated her mother days before her death. Rivers, 81, suffered a loss of oxygen to her brain on August 28, 2014, while physicians at the Yorkville Endoscopy center in Manhattan were performing procedures to examine her throat and vocal cords, and died a week later. The lawsuit said physicians were not adequately trained to recognize and deal with the type of emergency airway obstruction suffered by Rivers, and failed to detect her deteriorating vital signs.

Moreover, the complaint says, the Yorkville Endoscopy center allowed a physician whose presence was unauthorized to twice conduct a procedure to which Rivers had not consented, a trans-nasal laryngoscopy, in which a scope is passed through sinus passages into the larynx.

Source: Reuters