OR Danger! Doctors Make 4,000 Preventable Surgical Errors Each Year

Are you facing surgery? Your doctor has probably told you that the risks are low. He may have warned you that there is a ten percent chance of infection associated with the procedure, a five percent chance of serious effects like cardiac arrest, and a less than one percent chance of death. But, did he warn you that one out of every 1,500 patients that undergoes surgery experiences injury caused by a completely preventable surgical mistake?

Doctors at John Hopkins Medical School analyzed data from the National Practitioner Data Bank, a federal database of medical-malpractice awards and out-of-court settlements. Between 1990 and 2010, there were 9,744 malpractice payments related to surgical errors. These errors fit into 4 categories:

  1. Foreign objects left in the body (4,853 cases)
  2. Wrong procedures (2,446 cases)
  3. Wrong site surgeries (2,446 cases)
  4. Wrong patient surgeries (29 cases )

In the medical profession, these types of medical mistakes are known as “never events” because they are 100 percent preventable and should never occur in a hospital setting.

The doctors found that six percent (585) of patients died from the mistake, 33 percent (3205) were left permanently injured, and 59 percent (5768) recovered from their injuries. The average surgical malpractice settlement was $133,055.

While the database listed 4,853 medical malpractice settlements over a decade, the authors knew from a previous study that only about 12 percent of surgical errors ever result in a settlement. Using this figure, the doctors estimated that approximately 4,082 surgical mistakes actually occur in the United States each year. But according to the authors of this study, even this figure may be low.

The most common medical mistake involves foreign objects such as sponges that are left in the body. These objects often remain undetected until they cause complications. As many as one-third of objects left in the body during surgery are never found.

The study was originally published in the December 2012 issue of the journal Surgery.

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.