Joan Rivers’ daughter Melissa Rivers has reportedly filed a lawsuit against the Manhattan clinic her mother was admitted in. Jr. Rivers has alleged the hospital for a host of malpractices including a lack of care and performance of unauthorized procedures on her mother. Rivers was admitted to the hospital on August 28 and died on September 4. The lawsuit was filed on Monday.
The 81-year old veteran comic actor who starred in “Fashion Police’ on E! passed away after almost two weeks after she was admitted to the New York clinic. Melissa Rivers alleged that it was the lack of patient care in the Manhattan clinic that led to the death of her mother. Rivers was taken to the hospital for a routine endoscopy procedure. But due to the hospital’s malpractices, she met an unexpected death.
The city’s medical examiner noted that the cause of Rivers’ death was brain damage, which had resulted from a lack of oxygen supply to her brain during the endoscopy treatment. The agency highlighted the death as a case of therapeutic complication. According to the lawsuit, the doctors could not perform the endoscopy properly and sought to another procedure- laryngoscopy on the vocal chords of the celebrity, without her consent. The gastroenterologist who performed the procedure failed to acknowledge the anesthesiologist’s concerns over the matter and went ahead with it.
Later, Rivers’ private ENT specialist, Gwen Korovin went ahead and performed two procedures on her that she was not authorized to perform. It was during the second procedure that Rivers stopped breathing because of blockage of her airway passages in the procedure. Korovin soon left the OT to avoid being caught, the lawsuit highlighted.
Also, the lawsuit claims that one of the doctors continued to click pictures of Rivers during the operation even though she lay sedated on the operation table.