Pittsburgh Medical Malpractice Lawyer: Surgical Errors
Recent studies have shown that as many as 20% of surgical patients experience painful side effects and injuries due to surgical mistakes. Surgical errors come in many forms and can arise from the misconduct of any member of the operating-room team: the attending surgeon, a surgical resident, an operating room nurse, or the anesthesiologist.
Many medical malpractice cases that the attorneys at Rosen Louis & Perry pursue involve errors committed during surgery. Ranging from retained surgical devices to catastrophic errors such as inadvertently removing a vital part of a patient's brain, surgical errors can have devastating consequences for the patient.
Success in a Wide Range of Surgical Error Cases
Our lawyers have successfully recovered settlements and verdicts for clients in a wide range of hospital negligence and surgical error cases. Surgical errors we are frequently asked to investigate include:
- Operating on the wrong body part
- Retained surgical devices — a sponge or surgical instrument left in a patient following surgery
- Peripheral nerve injury from improperly positioning the patient on the operating room table
- Failure to monitor, including an anesthesiologist's failure to monitor the patient's breathing, heart rate, or oxygen level during surgery or failing to order replacement fluids or medication to correct a dangerous condition
- Poor surgical technique, including injuries caused by modern medical technology such as laparoscopic surgery and minimally invasive procedures
- Improper post-operative care
When patients are exposed to serious harm, we often see injuries such as:
- Pulmonary embolism — a blood clot forming in the leg and traveling to the brain or lung - a condition that is preventable with proper use of anti-coagulants
- Hospital-acquired infections, including MRSA
- Birth injuries from failure to perform a cesarean section in a timely manner
- Injuries to the brain, such as removing a vital part of the brain during surgery
- Injuries to arteries, nerves, veins, bowels, kidneys, bladders or other organs
Improper Surgical Technique Causing Serious Injuries
Usually, injuries caused by surgical instruments (injuries to the arteries, nerves, veins and other vital structures) can be completely avoided - provided the surgeon knows what he is doing. Inattention to proper technique or unfamiliarity with the surgical anatomy/equipment often causes mistakes that can catastrophically injure patients.
During the last 20 years, general surgery has witnessed a shift from "open" operations - where the patient's body is entered using a wide incision - to laparoscopic or thoracoscopic procedures - where operating instruments are introduced into the patient's body under guidance from a fiber optic camera. Minimally invasive approaches to surgical problems, in which surgery is performed through an extremely small incision, have also become popular. Many of these new surgical techniques are technically demanding and can expose the patient to serious harm if the operation is not performed by a skilled clinician.
Being advised before surgery that a certain complication can occur following a specific operation does not necessarily mean that negligence has not occurred when that complication actually comes to pass.
We Handle Hundreds of Surgical Mistake Cases
Every year, our law firm reviews hundreds of cases involving surgical mistakes. While investigating a case, we secure complete copies of the patient's medical records, pertinent X-rays and photographs taken during surgery. We scrutinize operative reports describing the patient's surgery, together with subsequent notes describing intraoperative complications, to discover whether surgical error has produced or contributed to our client's injury.
Caring Medical Malpractice Attorneys - Ready to Help
If you or someone you love has suffered a serious injury during, or shortly following, surgery, our Pittsburgh medical malpractice attorneys stand ready to investigate the case, discover what happened, and tell you whether a surgical error contributed to you or your loved one's injury.
Call 800.440.5297 or e-mail our Pittsburgh office to arrange a free consultation and case evaluation about your medical malpractice surgical error.
