Fact-Checked: Why Trust Surgical procedures are among the most invasive medical treatments available. Doctors often have to use general anesthesia to render a patient unconscious. Countless small issues can potentially arise during the procedure that can impact the patient’s prognosis.
Every surgery comes with an assortment of potential known complications. Patients are also at risk of errors made by surgeons and support professionals that can harm their health and chances of making a full recovery.
How do those dealing with a poor surgical outcome determine if they experienced a common complication that is outside of the control of a medical professional or an issue caused by actionable medical errors?
Patients should be aware of possible complications
Those undergoing surgical procedures generally need to provide informed consent. Surgeons should warn patients of the possible complications associated with a specific surgery. Those known complications may include anesthesia reactions, nerve damage and unique complications associated with specific procedures.
For example, if a patient requires the removal of cancerous or necrotized tissue, they may develop a postoperative seroma. Seromas are pockets of fluid that accumulate near the location of removed tissue. Seomas can be painful. They can increase the patient’s recovery timeline and may impact the development of scars in some cases.
Seromas are a known potential complication of a surgery. However, just because a seroma could happen, even if surgery was perfect, does not mean that the surgery was perfect. If a complication’s root cause in your surgery was because your doctor did not take proper precaution or rushed through a vital aspect of the procedure, then that complication was not a natural byproduct of the surgery itself or the body’s reaction to the operation. In this scenario, the seroma was caused by a surgical error.
A surgical error represents controllable factors that medical professionals neglected prior to or during the operation. A surgical error becomes actionable malpractice in cases where patients can show that a competent surgeon could have avoided the same issue.
Common actionable errors include operating on the wrong part of the body or leaving tools behind in the patient. If a different surgeon or anesthesiologist could have prevented the patient’s poor outcome, then what they experienced may be actual malpractice, not just a common and well-known surgical complication.
Reviewing medical records can help patients determine if they have grounds for a medical malpractice lawsuit. When surgeons make serious errors, patients may be able to hold them accountable for the impact of their professional mistakes.