One example of medical malpractice is wrong-site surgery. The consequences are often very severe. A person who undergoes an unnecessary or inaccurate surgery has to recover from it, leading to more medical bills, lost wages and the like. With some procedures, such as an amputation, full recovery may never be possible. It becomes a life-altering event.
There are a few different ways that this type of malpractice can occur. Let’s look at the three most common examples below.
Wrong site or side
First, the surgeon may simply operate on the wrong side of a person’s body or the wrong site entirely. This could happen if they operate on the left knee instead of the right, for example, or if they perform a procedure for a spinal cord injury at the wrong level or near the wrong vertebrae.
Wrong procedure
In other cases, the wrong procedure is carried out entirely. The patient may not be very familiar with the medical procedure they need, so they don’t realize that the procedure being performed is incorrect. When it comes to light after the fact, it’s clear they haven’t gotten the treatment they needed and now face extended healing times and other serious complications.
Wrong patient
Finally, even a surgeon who carries out the correct procedure on the correct side of the body could simply have the wrong patient. An example of this is when two patients have similar names. If the medical records get mixed up, the surgeon could make a critical error.
All of these mistakes can lead to significant costs, and injury victims need to know what legal options they have.