A recent study in the medical journal Archives of Surgery is creating a stir in both the medical and non-medical communities for its startling revelations regarding the incidence of serious surgical errors and other medical mistakes.

The study - conducted by a team of medical professionals - examined 27,370 records of medical mistakes kept by an insurance company that provides medical malpractice insurance to Colorado physicians.

The results?

Serious surgical errors and other medical mistakes that could be classified as "catastrophic" occur more far more often than previously thought.

Specifically, researchers discovered the following trends among Colorado physicians over a period of six and a half years:

  • Physicians operated on the wrong patient at least 25 times
  • Physicians operated on the wrong body part in 107 patients

While these "wrong-site" and "wrong-patient" surgeries represented only .05 percent of all medical mistakes examined by the researchers and would appear to be rare, the figures are actually "considerably higher" than previously thought.

"Each hospital, whether they publicly admit it or not, and whether or not it's discoverable in a lawsuit, has an episode of wrong-site or wrong-patient surgery either every year or once every few years," says Philip Stahel, MD, a surgeon at a Denver hospital and one of the study's researchers. "Almost every surgeon has seen one."

In addition to studying the incidence of surgical errors, the study also examined the prevalence of more mundane (but equally serious) medical mistakes such as mix-ups regarding x-rays, lab tests or patient records.

Researchers were able to pinpoint two common causes of the aforementioned types of medical mistakes: miscommunication and human error.

To be continued ...

If you lost a loved one to what you believe was medical negligence or were seriously injured by a surgical error, you should strongly consider contacting an experienced legal professional.

This post was for informational purposes only and is not to be construed as legal or medical advice.

Stay tuned for more from our Texas wrongful death/medical malpractice blog ...

Related Resources:

Surgery Mix-Ups Surprisingly Common (Health.com)