It is of basic knowledge that the field of medicine and the medical and healthcare professionals that work under this field of the profession are responsible for providing the best and high quality of medical and healthcare services to the people to ensure that they are living a healthy life and they could have easy access to medicine whenever they need it.
Surgeons are known for being one of the medical and healthcare as well as their expertise which is performing surgical operations on patients. Performing surgery is one of the hardest tasks a medical professional could ever handle and surgeons perform surgical operations on a daily basis. They must be so used to it and can always perform every surgery regardless of how different it is from the last time and do it without any complications.
But, no, that is not always the case. Mistakes and errors are inevitable in every situation in life, and most dangerously in situations wherein a person’s life is on the line and surgery is a good example of that. Surgical operations are mostly a 50 to 50 chance because it can be life-threatening but at the same time, it is one of the only ways to save a person’s life.
Surgery can be extremely terrifying, especially since a patient is entrusting their lives to a surgeon, an expert in performing surgical operations. But then again there are just some factors that induce the fear of a patient which is completely understandable. But remember, a surgeon is always trying their best in order to give the patient the best quality of surgical operations so that they could heal from the disease.
What Kind of Errors do Surgeons Make On Their Patients?
It is completely understandable that there are just some circumstances and factors that are beyond a person’s life which is why people will have to learn to accept it but for surgeons, it would be a total nightmare for them to find out that they made an error while performing a surgical operation or finding it out after they have performed the surgery which could be irreversible unless it has been observed immediately. Surgeons could not afford to make a mistake in their profession since their responsibility is to save a patient, to treat them from their diseases, and provide medical for them by having to get a scope of their inner system which can be pretty daunting.
Some of the common errors that a surgeon encounters and makes in their job are first, performing the wrong surgery on a person. Performing the wrong surgery on a person could cause further complications to the patient due to them having the internal parts of their bodies exposed to an external environment which could infect the patient. But another possible effect that could happen is when the surgery would not even treat the patient at all since it was a wrong surgery that was performed after all on them.
In some cases, a surgeon might have accidentally performed a surgical operation on the wrong person. Yes, it can happen. This happens if the workplace or the medical establishment is extremely hectic and there are some possibilities that a mixed-up in the surgical operation schedule made the surgeons perform on a wrong person or a patient that was not scheduled to them.
Lastly, this is what the article will be covering, is when a surgeon accidentally leaves some objects inside their patient’s body. This is actually a big nightmare and higher risks for complications and mortality could arise in this error for the reasons that it could cause internal infections which can be difficult to operate on.
What Are Some Objects or Items that Surgeons Accidentally Leave Inside Their Patients Body During a Surgical Operation?
Talking about the error of leaving objects in a surgical process, this segment of the article will further discuss the error and what kind of objects were mainly left while performing surgeries in the operation room.
First, some surgeons accidentally leave their surgical tools inside their patient’s body and an example of a surgical tool that some surgeons accidentally leave are needles. Needles are extremely thin and small, even despite the shine the object possesses, they will still be hard to locate due to how many parts and full of other components a person’s body has. Needles might have been dropped inside the patient’s body because the surgeons used them after sewing a tissue inside the body or used to sew an organ.
Other objects that are pretty hard to detect by the eye and sometimes a machine is sponges and gauzes. These materials are extremely absorbent and are used to clean the body’s surface that is covered with blood to remove the blood and give surgeons a clearer view of the surgery ahead. Since sponges and gauzes are absorbent, they will start to camouflage to look like a human’s organ or tissue and would confuse the surgeons that these organ or tissue lookalikes are actually part of the body and they might actually put it back inside. The worst scenario could be is that the gauze and sponge might probably be swimming inside the body, unnoticed and the surgeon and their surgical team will continue on with the surgery until they finish it.
Research has shown that the estimated count of cases that these types of errors of leaving objects inside a patient’s body in a surgical process occurs in about 1 out of 18,000 surgeries that happen in the operation room.
These said errors can actually have the surgeon who performed the surgery be sued or be filed for medical malpractice by the patient so that they could get the justice they deserve as well as the compensation for their recovery from the malpractice. As for the surgeons or surgical operators who committed the malpractice, they will face the consequences for their errors such as the suspension of their license or have it revoked to stop them from practicing surgical operations.