Never are patients as vulnerable as during surgery, when we are incapacitated and completely in the hands of the medical professionals we’ve trusted with our care and our lives. Unfortunately, surgical negligence or a hospital’s administrative error can cause the unthinkable to occur during surgery, including performing a procedure on the wrong body part. This is wrong-site surgery, and, alarmingly, it’s more common than we’d like to think. Contact a medical malpractice lawyer in Chicago if you believe you’ve been affected by a wrong-site surgery.
What Types of Procedures are Involved In Wrong-Site Surgeries?
The medical community considers wrong-site surgeries “never-events” because they should never occur if hospital staff follow established protocols. Still, a medical research study on never events that occurred during a recent ten-year period revealed wrong-site surgeries as the second most common never-event to result in permanent patient harm or death. The most common types of wrong-site surgeries include the following:
- Orthopedic surgeries, such as shoulder, knee, or hip surgery, negligently performed on the wrong site
- Spinal surgeries performed on the wrong vertebral level
- General surgeries, such as a gall bladder removal in place of an appendectomy, or removing the wrong kidney
- Neurosurgery on the wrong site in the brain
The Joint Commission, a group of medical professionals, established Universal Protocols to prevent wrong-site surgeries. These protocols require pre-marking the surgical site, implementing a pre-procedure verification, and performing a “time-out,” or a short pause before the first incision, during which the entire surgical team is meant to verify that they have the correct patient, correct procedure, and correct side before making the incision. When a medical team fails to follow the universal protocols, wrong-site surgeries occur, leaving permanent harm to the patient.
Wrong-Site Surgery Is a Catastrophic Injury
When a surgeon performs a procedure on the wrong body part, it’s a catastrophic personal injury, leaving permanent harm, such as organ loss, loss of limb, permanent scarring, and sometimes disability. In wrong-site surgery cases, the injury victim requires an additional surgery to address their original medical condition. For example, if a surgeon removes the healthy kidney from a patient with kidney cancer, they must still remove the diseased kidney, leaving the patient with no kidneys and dependent on dialysis and/or a kidney transplant.
In the worst cases, a wrong-site surgery causes wrongful death. For instance, in a recent Florida case, a patient died after the surgeon accidentally removed the patient’s liver instead of their spleen.
Proving Liability for Wrong-Site Surgery
Depending on the circumstances of the case and where the failure to follow protocol occurred, an individual surgeon may be liable for a wrong-site surgery, or the hospital may be liable for negligent training practices or administrative errors. Proving liability in a wrong-site surgery claim requires evidence showing the following:
- A doctor/patient relationship was in place when the injury occurred
- The medical provider owed the patient a duty of care to treat them at the standard of care accepted by the medical community, including the duty to follow universal protocols
- The provider violated their duty of care
- The violation directly caused the patient’s injury or death
- The injury victim or their surviving family member experienced economic damages from the injury, as well as physical pain and suffering
A successful wrong-site surgery claim requires an investigation to determine the liable party, present substantial medical evidence of liability, and carefully calculate the total recoverable damages, including past and future medical expenses, lost earnings, future income loss, and catastrophic injury damages. Our surgical error attorney in Chicago can help if you’ve been injured due to a wrong-site surgery. Call us today for a free consultation.
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