Joan Rivers’ Doctors ‘Failed To Identify’ Deteriorating Vital Signs, Intervention Came Too Late

Joan Rivers’ doctors failed to identify her deteriorating vital signs when she was undergoing throat surgery back in August, and that could have been why she died. According to Mail Online, the New York Department of Health and Human Services has released a report that acts as a “catalog of errors,” which, if avoided, may have saved Joan’s life.

For starters, it has now been confirmed that a secondary procedure was carried out on Joan Rivers that was not supposed to be done. Joan went in to the clinic for a EGD (Esophagogastroduodenoscopy) which she was prepared for. However, while doing the procedure, Dr. Gwen Korovin saw something and decided to do an unauthorized Nasolaryngoscopy.

Shortly thereafter, Joan Rivers’ doctors failed to identify signs that she was not handling the procedure well. Rivers ended up going into cardiac arrest after she was unable to breathe. Without oxygen moving through her body (some believe that was due to an obstruction in her throat following the Nasolaryngoscopy), Rivers’ organ function began to slow down. Just a short while after, Rivers’ blood pressure was down to 85 over 49, but still nothing was done to ensure that she was okay.

A staff member at the clinic also revealed that Joan was not weighed before her procedure, and was given Propofol; the dosage relies on a person’s body weight. There is conflicting information coming from the clinic in comparison to the doctors’ notes obtained by the health department. All of this is expected to be flushed out in court.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Joan’s daughter, Melissa Rivers, is suing Yorkville Endoscopy Clinic following the tragic death of her mom. She isn’t looking for money, but for justice.

Melissa plans to sue the medical center and the doctors in order to get to the root of the problem. She feels like she has been shut down after the New York Dept. of Health and Human Services found Yorkville Endoscopy LLC to be ‘deficient.’ She believes both the facility and Dept. of Health know what went wrong, but aren’t informing her of the exact cause.”

Since Joan Rivers’ doctors failed to identify her deteriorating vital signs, her condition could not be controlled or made better. Her ?cause of death has been listed as “anoxic encephalopathy due to hypoxic arrest during laryngoscopy and upper gastrointestinal endoscopy with Propofol sedation.”

The information provided by the health department will only help Melissa’s case. According to the New York Daily News, Melissa is very upset by this information, and is determined to hold people accountable for her mom’s death, which has been called “preventable.”

“As any of us would be, Ms. Rivers is outraged by the misconduct and mismanagement now shown to have occurred before, during, and after the procedure (on her mother),” said attorneys Ben Rubinowitz and Jeffrey Bloom.

[Photo courtesy of Virginia Sherwood/NBC]