Medication compensation?

[ArnoldBee]

My DH has just found out that the damage that his liver was caused by a medication that he was given in the past. No-one had ever told him - he only found out as he was given a print out by his GP for his urgent referral to cardiology. He's on various medications with his health issues and pretty much has been experimented on for the past 30 years as he is beyond current medical science.

There is nothing that can be done to heal his liver other than monitoring for the rest of his life.

His liver function is impacted by this damage which does impact on his everyday life.

I don't need opinions on the morals of suing the nhs as that's a moral question for him to consider for himself.

I just couldn't tell by googling if this was even a possibility?

So realistically, you've no evidence it's linked to medication apart from a line in his notes which you've not seen?

What else do you have? If nothing else, there's no case to answer.

Can you be a little clearer?
I am having trouble understanding what you mean.

He's certain he was told 4% but not which medication caused it? If he was followed up with blood tests over this period was he not warned the effect the medication was having to make an informed choice to continue taking it or not.

It sounds like his long-standing illness is highly complex, and as such it will be very difficult to establish what role one drug, taken for a limited period a long time ago, had in any liver function abnormalities. Which aren't actually impacting on his life, from the sound of it - the other manifestations of his mystery illness are much more incapacitating?

Not sure why you want to go down the road of law suits anyway - how will it help? If you're concerned about that entry in the notes, ask his consultant to sit down with you both and go through that period of his history with you.

DH has suffered from a medical condition since 1998 which they don't know what it is and he was told and I witnessed by the cardiologist that there is 4% of the population that they never find out what is wrong with them and that's the end of the road for him. All the tests contradict each other and if the results are to be taken at face value he should have been dead 20 years ago.

I saw the print out briefly of his notes on his way to cardiology in October 2022. The note was added in 2015 stating that xxxx medication had caused damage to his liver.

In 2007 he was diagnosed with NASH but no-one told him anymore. Apparently he has significant scarring and has had abnormal liver results since 2007 in all his tests.

Sorry my phone wasn't working properly hence I have put a better worded answer using my pc.

NASH - has anyone explained what they think has caused this?
It seems highly unlikely that one drug would cause NASH.

He just presumed he was fat hence the NASH. Just googling NASH now he's developed everything else that goes with it such as diabetes.
He wasn't fat until his condition started in 1998.

For the NASH I wouldn't like to say what came first the chicken or the egg however it seems odd that the note about the specific medication causing the liver damage has been added to his notes.

And maybe he didn't have NASH for some time after that - after he got fatter?
So this all started with a cardiac condition, and has progressed to NASH.

I have AIH which has led to cirrhosis which was caused by a prescription drug. I also have regular blood tests, fibroscans etc and now have to take immunosuppressive drugs to stop it getting worse. Liver damage though is listed on most drugs as a potential side effect. It wouldn't occur to me to get compensation though as all drugs have side effects of some sort. Mine was only discovered by accident when I had my gallbladder out. Does t stop me getting pissed off though

Should add that the drug that caused this for me is methyldopa which is a BP drugs. Annoyingly, I was only put on that at the time of going through IVF as it was considered safer than the one I was on. Pretty ironic really....and the bastard IVF didn't work either.

He thinks it was Sotalol which is a beta blocker. I'm googling the list of side effects.

Sotalol has been linked to a single case of clinically apparent liver injury, with onset of an acute hepatitis-like syndrome

If the prescriber can justify that the potential for benefit outweighed the risk profile as specified in the patient information leaflet, the prescriber is correct in their dealings. If the medication required the patient to have further health monitoring and that was not available to the patient then you may find there is a liability.

I am struggling to understand why you think that Sotalol can possibly be the cause of your husband's liver disease, in that case.

Because the note said so? DH was quite shocked to see it.

So is your husband the one person affected by it? I mean, if there has only been one documented case, it must be your husband?

Are you sure it wasn’t something like Amiodarone?

The only other one it could have been was Flecainide he says in his covid state.

We don't know - that's pretty much the whole point. No-one has ever discussed this with him.

I think you need to get a copy of his medical notes and ask for a conversation with a doctor. You can't get any advice that'll help unless you have facts, and at the moment you don't have them.

Flecainide seems more likely, it’s a known side effect

Exactly.
Whereas it definitely isn't a known side- effect of Sopalol.

Sotalol, sorry.