Family says nursing home didn't reveal black box warning
December 19th, 2008 by Jennifer Walker-Journey
The black box warning on the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal says it all: “Increased mortality in elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis.” But Bruce Bowman’s children claim they were never told by the nursing home staff that cared for their father that the medication he was being given could kill him.
“I’d never give any kind of consent for any of that,” says Martin Bowman, Bruce’s son and legal guardian, to the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. Martin approved all his father’s medication but said he was never told that the drug given to control his father’s agitation and physical aggression could kill him. In clinical trials, patients who died while taking Risperdal suffered from cardiovascular or infectious complications. Other side effects include vomiting, weight loss and muscle stiffness.
Risperdal is approved by the FDA to treat people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism with irritability. In 2005, the FDA issued the black box warning about the possible death in patients with dementia. A public investigator found that the nursing home was using consent forms that were seven years old, and thus didn’t show the black box warning.
Bruce died at the Taylor Park Nursing Home on June 19. His family says they visited him weekly and noticed he had started to deteriorate. They questioned nursing home aides who provided no answers. It was Bruce’s ex-wife, a former registered nurse, who discovered the medication Bruce was taking had a black box warning. The state Bureau of Nursing Home Resident Care investigated the home and found no violations of federal regulations by administering the drug.