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Errors During Surgery on the Rise

The number of surgical mistakes made in the United States each year is alarmingly high. Many, if not all, of these surgical errors could be avoided. Some surgical mistakes are just too hard for families to believe, such as performing surgery at the wrong site (wrong leg, arm etc.). When we enter an operating room as a patient, our lives are in the hands of our surgeon, and we trust them to perform our surgery without making errors, especially ones as egregious as operating on the wrong limb or cutting into the wrong area to remove a tumor.

Medical negligence/malpractice is defined as a medical professional's "failure to exercise the skill, care, and prudence necessary to prevent causing a patient injury or illness." Non-fatal surgical errors occur just as frequently and often result in serious injuries such as paralysis or other permanent disabilities. An estimated 98,000 hospital patients die each year as a direct result of medical malpractice or medical negligence involving surgical errors by surgeons and other healthcare professionals in the operating room.

When we sign consent forms allowing our surgeons to operate, we do not typically anticipate surgical errors will be made during our procedure. We tend to believe our surgeon has performed this procedure hundreds, maybe thousands, of times and is competent and experienced enough to perform the entire procedure without error. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Surgical errors are the most shocking of medical malpractice mistakes and include leaving surgical instruments inside patients during and after surgery, operating on the wrong site, and sometimes even operating on the wrong patient altogether.

Factors Contributing to Malpractice

Failure to take proper patient medical history
Failure to note all drug allergies
Surgeon fatigue
Inattentiveness
Miscommunication amongst surgical staff
Poor handwriting in patient charts
Poor pre-operative planning

Because the consequences of surgical errors are so serious, the medical costs involved in "fixing" those errors are exorbitant. Patients may have to pay for multiple surgeries to correct the problem; there may be nerve/organ damage; infection; and scarring. The emotional toll of being the victim of a surgical mistake is profound and some patients never recover from surgeons' grave mistakes.

Wrong site surgeries, perhaps the most devastating of all surgical errors, are actually on the rise; in 2006, healthcare facilities reported that 84 operations done in the United States involved the wrong body part or wrong side of the body. The actual number could be even higher because many hospitals are not required to account for mistakes publicly.

Efforts to Prevent Surgical Errors

There have been some efforts to correct the growing problem of surgical errors. Surgical teams are encouraged to have a last minute "meeting" in the OR to make sure the correct site is being prepped and to make sure it is, indeed, the right patient being prepped for surgery. Surgeons in some states have also been ordered to mark a black X on the correct surgery site to avoid wrong site surgeries. Some surgeons do not like to participate in these last minute meetings and some don't use the black X to mark the surgery site as they feel they are incapable of making such egregious errors. Taking a few extra seconds to make these last-minute checks could save lives and spare surgeons millions of dollars in malpractice lawsuits.

If you or a loved one has suffered or died to surgical medical malpractice in New York City, Long Islandincluding Suffolk and Nassau Counties, please visit the website of the Medical Malpractice Law Offices of Silberstein, Awad & Miklos.

posted by ujzboi @ 7:54 PM