Recent Study Indicates Serious Surgical Errors Occur 4,000 Times Each Year

February 02, 2013

Recent Study Indicates Serious Surgical Errors Occur 4,000 Times Each Year

Each day, patients put their trust in surgeons to perform life-saving operations. Although most of these surgeries occur without incident, a new study, recently published in the journal Surgery, indicates that thousands of serious surgical errors occur each year.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine examined 20 years of data from the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), a federally created database of medical malpractice claim information, to identify judgments and settlements related to serious surgical errors. Researchers focused on surgical "never events" - mistakes so serious that they should never happen. Specifically, they collected information about:
-Retained foreign bodies: cases involving a surgeon leaving a sponge or other object inside a patient
-Wrong site surgeries: cases where a surgeon performed a procedure on the wrong part of a patient's body
-Wrong procedure surgeries: cases where a surgeon performed the incorrect procedure on a patient
-Wrong patient surgeries: cases where a surgeon operated on the wrong patient

Overall, researchers identified 9,744 paid malpractice judgments and claims with payments totally $1.3 billion. These errors resulted in the death of 6.6 percent of patients, permanent injury in 32.9 percent of patients and temporary injury in 59.2 percent of patients. Researchers estimate that just over 4,000 of these sorts of injuries occur in the United States each year.

Many hospitals have already implemented safety procedures to help prevent the incidence of serious surgical errors. For example, surgical staff routinely perform a "timeout" before an operation begins to make sure that medical records and surgical plans match the patient on the table. A staff member will also typically mark the site of surgery in indelible ink before a patient goes under anesthesia. During surgery, teams will use a checklist to make sure that all sponges, towels and other items are accounted for before an operation is complete. Unfortunately, however, none of these systems are foolproof and, as the study indicates, mistakes do happen.

A Medical Malpractice Attorney Can Help

If you or someone you love has suffered serious injury due to the negligence of surgeons, nurses, or other medical staff, contact an experienced medical malpractice attorney. A knowledgeable medical malpractice lawyer can assess your case and help you get the fair and adequate compensation you deserve for medical bills, lost wages and pain and suffering. For more information about how a medical malpractice attorney can help you, contact a lawyer today.

Article provided by The Lawrence Firm, PSC
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