We place the highest confidence in the surgeons who perform the operations to improve our health. Some surgical injuries can never be fully eradicated, such as the risk of infection, there are some injuries that occur from mistakes that should never happen. Recent statistics show more than 4,000 negligent surgical errors occur annually in the United States. Even with the high-quality surgeons and hospitals in Denver, these surgical errors occur, causing injury to patients every year. The attorneys of Jordan, Herington & Rowley are here to provide the help you need to recover compensation in complex surgical error cases.
Devices Left in Patients
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.
Operation on the Wrong Site
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.
Surgeon Performs the Wrong Procedure
In these errors, the doctor is operating on the correct patient, but performs a procedure different from what was needed or scheduled for the patient. A doctor scheduled to remove a gall bladder, for instance, may instead remove an appendix. These errors are rare, but for the victims of this type of negligence, the results are often a painful need for further surgery, and difficulty recuperating from the improper operation.
Surgeries to the Wrong Patient
In some cases, the surgeon may perform an operation on the wrong patient. The surgeon operates on the correct body part, and performs the proper procedure, but the wrong patient receives the surgery. While it may seem inconceivable that such an error could occur in a modern surgical theater, this tragedy still occurs today.
If you’ve been the victim of a surgical error, the problem is not always immediately obvious. Colorado law places strict limitations on how long you have to file a medical malpractice claim for surgical errors, so as soon as you believe you may have been the victim of an error, you should not delay in pursuing a claim for compensation. The attorneys of Jordan, Herington & Rowley are experienced in evaluating medical reports to give you the best opportunity of receiving the compensation you need.