Wrongful Death Attorneys | Too much testosterone? Nurse practitioner accused of causing 2 deaths

Wrongful Death Attorneys | Too much testosterone? Nurse practitioner accused of causing 2 deaths

Louisville Courier JournalPublished 11:12 a.m. ET Nov. 30, 2018 | Updated 11:31 a.m. ET Nov. 30, 2018

To her friend and patient Thomas Hayden, nurse practitioner Karla King is a thorough and cautious professional.

Hayden, 70, a businessman who lives near Owensboro, said the testosterone treatments she gave him at the now-closed Balanced Life Medicine clinic were transformative.

“I have the body of a 55-year-old,” he said.

But King, 50, has been accused in lawsuits of causing the deaths by heart attack of two middle-aged patients by giving them excessive amounts of testosterone.

In October, she pleaded guilty in federal court to wire fraud.

And in a complaint filed with the Kentucky Board of Nursing and in an interview with police, former employees say she ordered testosterone, a controlled substance, through her late husband’s DEA number in the names of patients who didn’t want the drug, then illegally stockpiled it for sale to her own patients.

Karla King married Randall King, an Owensboro obstetrician-gynecologist, in 2012 and started a hormone practice the following year adjoining her husband’s practice. She closed her clinic after her husband’s death in 2016.

Hormone therapy is a burgeoning business in Kentucky and nationwide, but it also has come under attack. The Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure in June banned a doctor, the medical director of the Louisville-based 25 Again clinic, from practicing hormone therapy, ruling she had violated acceptable and prevailing medical standards by giving hormones to people whose levels are within normal ranges.

On June, 25 Again also was sued for allegedly causing a patient’s death, and the Board of Nursing this month filed complaints against eight nurse practitioners who previously worked there, alleging they violated guidelines adopted by the American Thyroid Association and the Endocrine Society.

Proponents of hormone therapy say it makes patients feel better and treats symptoms such as fatigue and listlessness that can plague patients, even if their hormone levels are normal.

King is accused of causing the deaths of patients James “Bimbo” Pate, 60, and James “Tony” Blandford, 58, by giving them extra testosterone when their levels of the hormone were normal.

Louisville attorney Ronald Johnson, the lawyer representing both of their windows, said testosterone-pellet inserts sent Blandford’s levels “off the charts.”

The case filed by Pate’s estate was settled for an undisclosed amount.

In Blandford’s case, a medical review in November comprised of three physicians found that King’s clinic “failed to comply with the appropriate standard of care,” and that was a “substantial factor in producing a negative outcome” for Blandford, who died in 2016. The board’s opinion allowed the complaint to proceed in circuit court.

King denies liability in both cases. She did not respond to requests for comment for this article, but her attorney, John Caudill, said a three-year FBI investigation found she’d never harmed a patient.

Read the complete article: https://justicestartshere.com/too-much-testosterone-nurse-practitioner-accused-of-causing-2-deaths/