In the medico-legal context, the obvious role of a noise consultant is in industrial deafness claims. This is an area which relies heavily on medical and acoustical reports when preparing for a court action.
However, this is a fairly straightforward procedure which is closely controlled by the provisions of the ‘Control of Noise at Work’ regulations.
A gastroenterologist specialises in diseases and disorders of the gastro-intestinal tract (the gut or bowel) and deals with illnesses such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, coeliac disease, oesophageal varices, malabsorption syndromes, gastric and duodenal ulcers as well as cancers of the gastrointestinal tract (stomach and bowel cancer). Other areas of expertise include diseases of the liver such as hepatitis and liver failure.
Medical negligence is a vast and complex subject. What’s more, a claim for compensation must be settled or legal proceedings must have been issued within three years of the event causing the injury. Legal action will become statute barred if this time limit is exceeded; however, there are some exceptions to this rule.
One of the most frequent types of compensation claim seen by medical negligence solicitors in the UK is the failure to diagnose cancer. Significant advances in medical knowledge have made it possible to prevent or treat some types of this illness through early detection, which can dramatically improve quality of life, survival chances and life expectancy.
Breast cancer More than one in 10 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and early detection, through self examination and mammograms, is a key factor in successful treatment and higher survival rates.
Cancer of the breast often responds well to early treatment; however sometimes, even after a woman feels a lump, her cancer goes undetected for months – often due to medical negligence, which results in more legal claims for cancer of the breast than any other disease.
Two workers were dismantling a steel chimney at a manufacturing plant. The chimney caught fire and there was doubt about whether the fatalities were caused by the fire or the subsequent fall from height.
It transpired that the chimney was coated internally with a bituminous residue. The HSE maintained that the bitumen caught fire and the flames spread to the rest of the chimney. However, we had doubts that the flame from the burner would start a fire and that the fire would be self-sustaining in that way.
Tests were carried out on a sheet of metal of the same thickness to determine the area that would be heated by the flame, the metal temperature and the time for the heat to decay.
