Surgical Errors

One of the most common surgical errors occurs when a surgeon accidentally leaves a foreign object in the patient’s body. These objects may be medical equipment used in the surgery, such as forceps or scalpels, or more commonly, sponges or towels that are inadvertently left in the body. No surgeon would be likely to cause this harm intentionally, but any reasonable standard for surgeons would clearly demonstrate that this negligence is inexcusable.

Injury to patients from foreign objects left in the body is often severe. At a minimum, the patient will likely require another surgery to remove the object, with all the attendant risks of such a procedure. The object left inside often causes damage to the body and may require special surgery to repair damaged tissue or organs.

A surgery to the wrong site is another category of surgical errors. This can happen when a surgeon performs the intended procedure, but to the wrong part of the body: For example, a shoulder surgery on the wrong shoulder. While many steps have been taken to reduce these errors, and they are fortunately less common today, these errors will result in painful recovery for the area that should not have been operated on as well as the needed surgery to the correct body part still being required. Often, a patient who is able to endure one surgery may be unable to undergo a second surgery so soon after the first, and so the original problem continues long after it should have been repaired.