Surgical Errors

Surgical errors happen across the country every week, sometimes leaving patients with major medical complications. One of the most serious and possibly life-altering surgical mistakes involves a wrong-site or wrong-side surgery. In some cases, the physician may remove...

It's said that art imitates life, but that is a scary thing to contemplate for those who have watched the FOX television drama, The Resident. The show depicts the fictional Chastain Park Memorial Hospital in Atlanta and its medical doctors and residents. The pilot...

Surgeons have an awesome responsibility to their patients. The patients they treat are often critically ill with their lives hanging in the balance. They are dependent on the surgeon's knowledge, guidance and steady hands. One wrong move in the operating room can mean...

Women often have hysterectomies to remove cancerous organs or just the risk of cancer in their female parts. But there is a subset of patients whose hysterectomies actually spread their cancer throughout their bodies and kill them. That can occur when a surgeon uses...

A surgical fire -- which is one that occurs inside the operating room while the patient is on the operating table and usually under anesthesia -- is a "never" event. That means that it should never happen. If proper controls are in place, it wouldn't. Yet, it's...

Modern anesthesia has made medical miracles possible -- and it's used in almost 40 million procedures a year. Naturally, that means mistakes sometimes happen. However, many of those mistakes are avoidable with a little extra care. What you can control If you're a...

Did you know that the position your body is placed in during surgery could determine how well you recover? Proper patient positioning is a critical part of the surgical procedure -- when it's overlooked or mishandled, patients suffer unnecessary complications: --...

There's a stereotype that's seen on television and in movies of the "rude but brilliant" surgeon or medical specialist. The general idea is that their medical brilliance tends to make them abrupt around other people and impatient with the flawed mortals around them,...

If something goes wrong during a surgery, how do you tell if it was just a complication or an actual mistake, especially when the hospital seems to use the words interchangeably What exactly is the difference, anyhow? A mistake is an error on the part of the surgeon,...

You may know the dangers of getting an epidural injection if you've suffered the side effects. A needle that goes in too far puts you at risk for spinal cord damage, and a needle that doesn't go in far enough won't deliver the medications you need accurately. If...