Surgical Error Leads to Healthy Baby Mistakenly Receiving a Frenectomy
In December 2015, Jennifer Melton gave birth to a healthy baby boy at the University Medical Center in Lebanon, Tennessee. Nate was only a day old when he was taken for a surgical procedure that he was never meant to have.
Nate was in the hospital’s nursery when he was taken by a nurse for a frenectomy whereby the tissue that connects the tongue to the floor of the mouth was cut. This is a surgery that another child was meant to undergo to remediate his “tongue-tie.”
A frenectomy is a simple surgical procedure of the mouth that removes one or both of the frena (connective tissue membrane that attaches one surface of the mouth to another). A lingual frenum is a connective tissue that connects the tongue to the bottom of the mouth. This is the frenum that is removed when a child has a “tongue tie” that affects their ability to speak and/or feed properly.
Medical Malpractice Lawsuits on The Rise
Medical malpractice is something which occurs when a healthcare professional fails to provide you with appropriate treatment, omits to take appropriate action, or gives substandard treatment that causes harm, injury, or even death to you or a family member.
Medical malpractice lawsuits make it possible for you or your family member to recover compensation from any harm that has resulted from sub-standard treatment.
As of 2017, it was reported by “Medscape” that there were between 15,000 and 19,000 medical malpractice lawsuits in the United States alone. These statistics can be further broken down to reveal the following:
Hospital Negligence Led to Esmin Green’s Death
In 2008, a woman named Esmin Green died in the waiting room of Brooklyn’s King’s County Hospital Center in full view whilst hospital personnel did nothing to assist her. Ms. Green was a 49-year-old Jamaican immigrant who was admitted to the hospital as a psychiatric patient. She had been waiting for nearly 24 hours in the hospital’s waiting room before collapsing onto the waiting room floor due to a blood clot.
Hospital staff failed to provide basic medical care to Ms. Green and then tried to cover up their neglect. However, the incident was caught on one of the hospital’s cameras. The New York Civil Liberties Union and other lawyers were able to use this footage in a medical malpractice lawsuit against the hospital for hospital negligence.
Wrong Site Surgical Errors
Wrong Site Surgical Errors
Surgical errors have been commonplace since the dawn of medicine, however, in the 21st century age of rapid innovation, such errors are now unacceptable and more likely to result in successful medical malpractice lawsuits than ever before.
What is a Wrong Site Surgical Error?
A wrong-site error is a surgical error that involves surgeons operating on the wrong area of your body. This type of surgical error is severe, as its aftereffects can be both debilitating and deadly.
Hospital Negligence
Oftentimes, there is confusion regarding hospital negligence and other forms of medical malpractice. Unlike other types of medical negligence, hospital negligence is not related to individual physicians; but it involves improper conduct on the part of hospital administration or hospital employees which results in physical injury to you or a family member.
Surgical Errors
Whilst many errors in healthcare are inevitable, surgical errors can often be the most debilitating. These events are termed “never events,” as they are errors which should never have occurred, and are indicative of alarming underlying safety issues.
What Are Surgical Errors?
In short, surgical errors are preventable mistakes made during surgery which can lead to injury, disability, or even death.
Medical Errors
According to a study conducted by John’s Hopkins in 2016, it is estimated that more than 250,000 deaths occur in the United States each year due to some form of medical error.
What Are Medical Errors?
Heart attacks, stroke a risk after noncardiac surgery
A study published in JAMA Cardiology shows that those who undergo noncardiac surgery may develop complications that lead to heart attacks, stroke and even death. New York residents who are hospitalized for non-heart-related surgery will want to know what’s involved in this trend; after all, more than 300 million noncardiac surgeries are performed worldwide every year.
Doctor sued for removing woman’s healthy kidney
New York readers know that all surgeries come with risks. Unfortunately, one of those risks can be the surgeon who performs the procedure. For example, an Iowa woman has filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against a South Dakota doctor for allegedly removing a healthy kidney during a botched surgery.
Study says radiology-related malpractice often ends in death
Coverys, the provider of liability insurance for medical practitioners, has released a report that may be of interest to New York residents. After studying over 10,000 radiology-related medical liability claims filed between 2013 and 2017, researchers found that the misinterpretation of clinical tests was behind 80 percent of all diagnosis-related claims.