What are wrong surgery incidents?

Despite the fact that surgeons train for years and have many successful operations under their belt, they are still human. This means they are still prone to making potential mistakes.

Surgical mistakes can have a huge impact on your physical and mental health, resulting in the need for corrective procedures, further medical treatment, therapy and more. Sometimes, doctors cannot even undo the damage of a botched surgery. But what causes these incidents in the first place?

Wrong site surgeries

The Patient Safety Network discusses some of the most common types of wrong surgery situations. These are some of the most common ways that patients end up dealing with surgical mistakes.

First, there are wrong-site surgeries. This happens in an event where the medical team operates on the wrong side of a patient’s body. For example, the surgeon may operate on the left kidney, when it is the right kidney that is in need of help. This can result in the damage or removal of healthy tissue, while the unhealthy tissue continues to fester.

Wrong procedure surgeries

Then, there are wrong procedure surgeries. A misunderstanding in communication may lead to the medical team carrying out an incorrect procedure on a patient. Everything else about the surgery may be correct, such as the area of operation.

Wrong patient surgeries

Finally, there are wrong patient surgeries. With this mistake, they have the right procedure and they do it on the right part, but they perform the surgery on the wrong patient.

These are “never events”, i.e. events that should never happen. Hospitals take steps to prevent these issues, but they do still occur. Sufferers should know how to proceed if they end up involved in such issues.