Surgical Errors can occur in different ways. Health care providers and doctors refer to these types of injuries as “Iatrogenic” which means caused by the doctor. The question still remains as to whether it is negligent i.e. a violation of the standard of care for the injury to have occurred. An experienced medical malpractice lawyer is needed to help discern the difference between a surgical injury that is a known recognized complication of the procedure and one that is not.
Examples of surgical errors include but are not limited to: injuring a nerve or nearby blood vessel during surgery, removing the wrong organ or injuring an adjacent organ, failing to control bleeding, failing to control fire hazards, or failing to safely position the patient on the table.
Even if the surgical injury is a known complication, the failure to timely recognize, diagnose and treat the injury could be negligent.
Unnecessary surgeries also occur. Several surgeries have been found to confer no benefit to the patient after review and analysis. The Mayo Clinic investigated about found a number of medical practices conferred no benefit to the patient.
Depicted is a subacromial decompression procedure. How it should have been performed and how it was performed by an orthopedic surgeon who did not properly identify the anatomy and shaved the undersurface of the collar bone/clavicle into two pieces instead of the under shaving the acromion.
