There are healthcare standards in the medical field that dictate the quality of services you ought to receive from a heath facility and its health caregivers.
However, there are negligent medical practitioners who offer sub-standard medical care. Their negligence causes you injuries that may require substantial amounts of money to treat. Filing a lawsuit is necessary to get the financial reparations for any pain and suffering, injuries, and expenses you incur due to a medical practitioner’s negligent behavior.
Surgical procedures are very delicate and require a lot of focus and attention to detail in order to avoid complications or fatalities. Intrinsically, a surgeon is required to walk you through the possible outcomes of the procedure and the health risks to which it exposes you.
Despite all the scrutiny, some mistakes still occur in and out of the operating room, and may end up causing you injuries. In this article, we highlight seven of the most common surgical errors for which you are entitled to a surgical negligence claim.
Leaving Surgical Instruments in Your Body
Surgical procedures are often timed to prevent complications, which arise as a result of different factors such as high-blood pressure. As such, the operating surgeons unknowingly leave some surgical apparatus inside your body in an attempt to hasten the surgery.
As a result, the surgical instruments will cause organ damage and other medical complications. For instance, if the surgeon forgets to take out a bandage or a pair of clipping forceps they used to control excessive bleeding, then the bandage may start causing organ damage after a few weeks. Additionally, the instruments in your body may result in more health complications such as cancer and kidney failure.
Once you identify that your health is deteriorating as a result of the surgical instruments inside your body, you need to contact your medical malpractice lawyer Michigan to have them file a compensatory medical malpractice lawsuit.
Future treatment procedures for the new health condition caused by the surgical instruments in your body may be quite costly to cover. Hence, you should not bear the financial burden all by yourself.
Wrong Surgical Procedures
A surgeon performs a lot of tests prior to the surgical operation that help to establish the cause of your health problem. Furthermore, the tests allow the surgeon to pinpoint the affected organ(s) on which to operate.
If the tests are inconclusive or are done incorrectly, the data with which the surgeon will operate is inaccurate.
If an assistant gives the wrong file, the surgeon gets the wrong patient’s information, which translates to dire outcomes on your health after the surgery. For instance, your surgeon may receive medical files for a patient who is in need of a kidney transplant surgery. If you were to receive and appendectomy, you will end up losing a healthy kidney.
What’s more, you will develop additional health problems on top of your initial health problem.
Anesthetic Errors
Anesthesia is administered (especially in a surgical procedure) to numb your nerves and reduce pain reception. Nevertheless, it requires a lot of care to avoid administering wrong dosages. A small dose means that you will be partially conscious during surgery and feeling all the incisions.
An overdose, on the other hand, translates to organ failure, brain damage, and at times, death.
Mislabeled Surgical Specimen
Before any tumor is removed, some tissue is sampled for testing to determine the best surgical procedure to use. Scans and X-rays are also necessary for proper imaging.
An error such as mislabeling a specimen tube may happen, meaning that your test results are inconclusive or worse, getting another patient’s test results.
Practitioner Errors
Some surgical errors are caused by the practitioner’s disregard to surgical protocols such as improper scrubbing, causing infections to every organ touched.
Additionally, the surgeon may damage other organs due to lack of focus especially if they are fatigued or sick.
Conclusion
The surgical errors discussed above cause unnecessary injuries and health complications, causing significant pain and suffering. Additionally, the injuries are associated with high medical expenses, necessitating a medical malpractice claim against such negligent practitioners.
