Types of surgical errors

Do you or someone you love have to undergo a surgical procedure in the coming future? Or, maybe you have already had a procedure and believe that something isn’t quite right. Either way, you should educate yourself about some of the types of errors that can be made. Ideally, preventing a problem is what you want to have happen but if this cannot happen, you will at least want to know what to look for to spot it as quickly as possible.

According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, poor communication among surgical team members may well be at the heart of some very serious types of surgical errors. Referred to as never events, these mistakes involve operations performed on the wrong people which may happen in cases where two patients have similar last names. Another type of surgical never event is a surgery that is performed on the wrong part of the body. For neurosurgeons it is said that operating on the wrong part of the spine may be a big risk. Another example may be the removal of a right ovary instead of a left ovary.

A third type of never event is when the right patient receives the wrong operation. If you are slated to have a kidney removed but instead surgeons remove a gallbladder, this may be a wrong-procedure error.

If you would like to learn more about how poor communication may increase the risk of an error during surgery, please feel free to visit the medical communication and surgical errors page of our Louisiana medical malpractice website.