The question, ‘What surgical errors lead to medical malpractice?’ is an interesting one. There are a number that we’ve seen and represented clients in.
A classic one is a surgery called a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, where they use a laparoscope. What happens during that surgery is that sometimes the surgeon transects the common bile duct, and that’s a grave complication—one that shouldn’t happen if the anatomy is correctly identified.
Another example is cancer surgery, where the doctors, for whatever reason, don’t obtain clear margins during the procedure. That’s an example of surgical misadventure that we’ve pursued.
Maybe another example would be hitting major arteries due to failure to adequately dissect the plane and recognize where they are. That kind of mistake can cause grave injury, and it’s another form of surgical error we’ve seen lead to malpractice claims.
