Surgical Errors

Agreeing to undergo surgery can be scary. People worry they will be harmed or killed. Surgery is necessary though in many circumstances and oftentimes improves lives dramatically. Surgery done correctly and with care is generally felt to be safe. There are risks,...

Patients who go into surgery, whether in a hospital or an outpatient center, count on the staff to ensure they are safe throughout the procedure. While many surgeries are successful and the patients don't suffer any harm, there are instances in which patients have to...

When facing a surgery you have enough to worry about without fretting over whether or not the hospital staff will leave a foreign object inside you. The horror of an object left behind is referred to as "retained surgical instruments," and it happens frequently enough...

When you go in for a surgery you expect the doctors to know what they are doing. There should be no question in your mind about the procedure being performed.Unfortunately, surgeries don't always go according to plan. If you wake up from a procedure only to discover...

A lead-in to today's blog post might be termed "Reasonable assumptions gone awry." The facts that emerge from a recent article in an esteemed medical journal reveal with chilling force how something that should be a reality in the medical profession is far from...

We pose a simple question to our readers in Maricopa County and across Arizona today, namely this: How many times have you had surgery?According to a recent study, you can essentially divide that number by two to come up with the number of drug-related mistakes you...

The officials from the US Department of Veterans Affairs said that a former patient's inability to use his arm in an uncompromised manner had nothing to do with negligence on the part of the doctor who performed surgery on him.However, a federal judge ruled after a...

It might well be true, as intoned in one adage, that "music soothes the savage beast."Does it soothe your doctor, though? More specifically, does it contribute to collectively calming the nerves of a surgical team during an operation and help surgeons, nurses and...

Most of us want to live our lives with a sense of personal empowerment. We prefer to make our own decisions whenever possible. However, there are times when we have to trust the decisions of others. When we are in need of surgery, we must allow doctors and other...