Surgical Errors Surprisingly Common

Medical malpractice through surgical room errors.

In the United States and all over the world, millions of people enter hospitals every year to undergo various surgeries to help cure what ails them. As patients, our lives are in the hands of our surgeons, and we trust them to use their years of training and specialized skills to "fix" whatever is wrong with us. Unfortunately, surgeons make mistakes, and surgical errors are actually becoming more frequent in the United States.

Thousands of people are injured each year by surgical errors related to medical negligence and medical malpractice. 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."

It has been reported that there are approximately 98,000 deaths annually in the United States due to errors during surgery. Non-fatal surgical errors occur just as often and often result in serious injury such as paralysis or some other permanent disability.

When patients require surgical procedures, they are informed of the risks associated with that surgery and made to sign a consent form allowing the surgeon to proceed with the required surgery. Virtually all surgeries require anesthesia and with anesthesia come certain risks such as a bad reaction to the anesthesia, blood clots, cardiovascular complications, infections and complications with the healing process. We, as patients, however, do not typically anticipate surgical errors during our procedure. We tend to believe that our surgeon has performed our procedure hundreds, if not thousands of times, and is competent and experienced enough to get through the surgery without committing errors.

Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Surgical errors are some of the most shocking and dangerous of all medical mistakes. Surgical instruments can be left inside patients, surgeons sometimes operate on the wrong site, and sometimes, the even the wrong patient is operated on.

There are several causes of surgical errors including:

· Poor pre-operative planning
· Inattentiveness
· Fatigue
· Miscommunication
· Recklessness
· Poor handwriting

The consequences of surgical errors are usually grave; victims and their families are forced to deal with astronomical medical costs and other devastating consequences including:

· Multiple surgeries to correct the problem
· Nerve and/or organ damage
· Infection
· Scarring/disfigurement

Wrong site surgeries are on the rise, and, in 2006, health care facilities reported that 84 operations were done involving the wrong body part or the wrong patient, even. Some states require hospitals to report such catastrophic errors but many hospitals in the United States are not obligated to account for the mistakes publicly.

There have been recent efforts to fix this problem; since 2004, doctors have been required to mark the spot they plan to cut while consulting with their patient before surgery. Nurses are supposed to call a "time out" in the operating room to call everyone's attention to a last second safety check in an effort to ensure the right procedure is being performed on the right patient. But many doctors (who feel they wouldn’t make a mistake) ignore these checks.

If you or a loved one has been the victim of a surgical error in Philadelphia or anywhere in Pennsylvania, please contact the experienced Medical Malpractice Attorneys at Pomerantz Perlberger & Lewis LLP.