There are over 46 million surgical procedure performed in the United States each year, and the great majority of them go off without a hitch. Surgeons are exceptionally skilled at their craft, and most work tirelessly to ensure the best possible outcome for their patients. However, even surgeons make mistakes, and when they do their patients can suffer the most severe of consequences.
What is Surgical Malpractice?
Surgical malpractice is a case where a surgeon causes undue injury to her patient due to negligence. Negligence is defined as the deviation from the accepted medical standards of care. This essentially means that a surgeon performed her job in a way that another surgeon in a similar situation wouldn't have. When that deviation results in injury to the patient, medical malpractice has occurred.
Surgical negligence can take a wide variety of forms, and often stems from fatigue, hurriedness, lapses of judgment or just simple human error.
Types of Surgical Malpractice
Surgical malpractice can occur in an infinite number of ways, but generally, the types of injuries and there causes are grouped into several categories:
Physical Errors
These are injuries that occur as the result of the surgeon causing physical damage to internal organs, nerves or blood vessels.
Anesthesia Errors
One of the most dangerous aspects of any surgical procedure is the administration of general anesthesia. Lack of oxygen to the brain, overdose of anesthetics, dosage errors in the "cocktails" and many other errors can often cause permanent brain injury or even death.
Wrong Surgery Site
Medical standards provide for strict protocols prior to any surgery to ensure the correct surgery is performed on the correct part and the correct patient. Lapses in this protocol can lead to a wrong site surgery or even surgery on the wrong patient.
Unnecessary Surgery
Unnecessary surgeries are becoming more and more common in American hospitals, and it has been estimated that almost 20% of pacemaker, coronary artery and other heart related surgeries are unnecessary. While the procedure itself may not cause injury, an complications in an unnecessary surgery can lead to a medical malpractice lawsuit, where the negligence stems from the surgery being ordered in the first place.
Foreign Object Left in a Patient
It is critical that, after any surgery, every surgical instrument, piece of gauze and any other medical devices be accounted for prior to closing the surgery site. Foreign object left in patients can cause injury during recovery, or infection which can lead to sepsis, septic shock and death.
Surgical Malpractice and Legal Consequences
Patients that are injured due to surgery errors of any kind may seek legal and economic relief by pursuing a medical malpractice claim. Patients can sue a surgeon, anesthesiologist, nurse and/or hospital for damages resulting from medical negligence.
Medical malpractice lawyers specialize in these complex types of cases, and usually have a medical doctor on staff or nearby to investigate claims and determine if a surgeon deviated from the accepted medical standards of care.
