It is every patient's worst nightmare: to wake up in the recovery room after surgery to learn that something went wrong. In some cases, the bad outcome is simply a matter of chance: one of the known risks of the surgery happened to occur. But in other cases, the bad outcome is the direct result of the negligence of the physician performing the surgery and was entirely avoidable.

Surgical mistakes happen much more often than most Americans realize. Sometimes these mistakes are minor and may never cause any harm to the patients, but this is not always the case. According to the American Medical Association, 98,000 people lose their lives each year as a result of a medical error, many of which are surgical errors. This makes preventable medical errors the eighth leading cause of death in the country, taking more lives each year than motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer or AIDS.

Below you will find information on some of the most common types of surgical errors. If you have been the victim of a surgical error or have lost a loved one as a result of a physician's negligence, contact an experienced medical malpractice attorney. Under New Jersey law, you have the right to file a medical malpractice suit against the health care provider responsible for your injury. By filing a lawsuit, you can help protect other people from being harmed.

Common Types of Surgical Errors

The term "surgical error" encompasses a broad range of mistakes that may occur before, during or after a surgical procedure. While many of the errors may be the direct result of an action or inaction on the part of the surgeon, other health care providers also may be responsible for the mistake, including anesthesiologists, nurses and other hospital employees.

Patient Consent Errors

Prior to performing surgery on a patient, the physician must obtain the patient's well informed consent to have the procedure. In order to gain the patient's consent, the physician has a duty to explain all of the known risks and potential side-effects of the procedure. This is known as obtaining "informed consent." With the exception of emergency situations, surgeons are not permitted to operate on a patient without their informed consent.

However, not all surgeons spend the time necessary to provide patients with all the information they need to give their informed consent for a surgical procedure. Instead, the doctor or even a nurse or other hospital employee will ask the patient to sign a long, detailed consent form prior to the surgery. In some cases, patients have had these forms shoved into their faces moments before the actual surgery, giving them no time to read the form, let alone ask questions or fully understand what they are being required to sign. Then, if there is a bad result after the surgery, the patient will be told that the result was one of the known risks of the procedure, which the patient "consented" to.

Surgical Errors

When a patient agrees to have a surgery, the patient normally does so believing that his or her chosen surgeon is competent and completely capable of performing the procedure. However, this is not always true. In some cases, general surgeons will perform procedures that are best left to a specialist and as a result, they will make a mistake.

Surgeons do not have to be board-certified in a specialty in order to perform specific types of operations. In fact, they do not have to have a board certification at all. Certain physicians may be motivated financially to perform surgeries they have not performed before or have not performed very often when the patient would be better served by a referral to a more experienced surgeon or even from a non-surgical course of treatment.

Surgical Site Errors

It sounds like something that only would happen in a bad movie: a patient goes in for a surgery on her right leg, but the doctor performs the surgery on her left one instead. Unfortunately, physicians perform surgery on incorrect body parts more often than patients should be comfortable with. In the most egregious examples, surgeons have removed or operated not only on the wrong body parts, but also on the wrong patients.

Anesthesia Errors

The majority of surgical procedures require the use of local or general anesthesia. Generally, anesthesiologists are in charge of administering the anesthesia to the patient, but sometimes it also may be administered by a nurse anesthetist. Some examples of anesthesia errors include anesthesiologists who give the patient too much intravenous replacement fluids, allow the patient's heart rate to drop too low and/or fail to properly monitor the patient's body temperature. Anesthesia errors can result in catastrophic injuries to the patient, including brain injuries and even death.

Infection

One of the biggest risks of any surgical procedure is infection. Patients can develop an infection during or after the procedure. For example, if the operating room and surgical instruments are not properly sterilized before the surgery, the patient may develop an infection as a result. Likewise, if the surgeon, nurse or other member of the surgical team does not thoroughly wash their hands, the patient may get an infection.

After the surgery, the patient may develop an infection if his or her wound site is not kept clean or if an IV is placed in an unsterile site. However, patients are most likely to develop an infection post-surgery from contact with hospital staff members who have not washed their hands after tending to another infected patient. The most dangerous infections patients can develop are staph infections, like MRSA, which may result in death if left untreated.

Conclusion

A patient's medical records may not accurately reflect what happened in his or her case, especially if a surgical error or other medical mistake occurred. In some cases, physicians and other hospital staff members even will go back and make changes to a patient's records in order to minimize or remove the appearance of any mistake on their part.

For these reasons, it is important for victims of surgical errors to begin working with an experienced medical malpractice attorney as soon as possible. Med mal cases are some of the most complex types of legal cases, so the more time an attorney has to prepare the case, the better.

Contact an experienced attorney today to begin preparing your surgical error case.