Written by
Walter F. Roche Jr.
The Tennessean
A 73-year-old Robertson County woman has filed suit in circuit court charging that she contracted fungal meningitis after being injected with tainted spinal steroids at the Saint Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgical Center.
The suit filed in Nashville is the latest in more than a dozen filed by local victims of the nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak that has killed 15 patients treated in Tennessee and sickened 153.
According to the complaint, Joyce McKinney of Springfield went to the Howell Allen Clinic on July 20, 2012, complaining of radiating neck pain and was referred to Saint Thomas Outpatient Neurosurgical Center, where she received injections of methylprednisolone acetate on Aug. 3 and Aug. 17.
The spinal steroid, the suit states, was purchased from the New England Compounding Center, the Massachusetts drug compounder blamed by state and federal regulators for the fungal meningitis outbreak.
She was hospitalized multiple times the next month but it wasn’t until Sept. 25, 2012, that her family physician was advised that she might be suffering from fungal meningitis, according to the 17-page complaint. It was only then that she began treatment with anti-fungal medications.
McKinney declined to comment Tuesday.
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