Toward the end of 2011, a hospital in another state began doing heart surgery on infants. By June 2015, no less than nine babies died at the hospital. Michigan readers might be relieved to know that -- finally, in Aug. 2015 -- the program was shut down due to...
Surgical Errors
Surgical operation complications: study says return to original provider/facility
According to a recent study led by a researcher from the University of Utah School of Medicine, patients who suffer from complications after a surgery do best to return to the hospital where the surgery occurred rather than having the problem addressed somewhere else....
Study: preventable surgical errors are rare, but causes remain unclear
Although we live in a country that offers some of the best health care services in the world, many of us don’t think too much about the possibility that we could be injured by our doctors. Mistakes in medical care do happen, though. In some cases, mistakes are...
Eye Surgeon Pays $1.4M To Settle Unnecessary Surgery Lawsuit
An ophthalmologist recently agreed to pay the federal government $1.4 million to settle a lawsuit against him concerning the False Claims Act. The federal government alleges that Dr. John Arthur Kiely performed unnecessary surgeries on Medicare and Medicaid patients...
How Are Surgical Patients Exposed To Incurable Brain Disease?
Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (CJD) is an untreatable brain disease affecting one in one million people each year. It is thankful that CJD is rare, because it is often regarded as the human version of "mad cow" disease, quickly transforming healthy brain proteins into...
Surgeon’s Egotism, Drug Use Caused Patients’ Paralysis, Death
The former patients of a surgeon recently filed lawsuits against the hospital that hosted him, arguing that it had knowledge that the doctor was an "an egomaniac, mentally ill, an alcoholic, drug addict or a combination thereof."The lawsuits allege that the hospital,...
Considering Hip Or Knee Surgery? List Of Best And Worst Hospitals
Choose your hospital for hip or knee replacement surgery wisely, as the complication rate can greatly differ. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) has recorded the number of complications that Medicare patients suffered after receiving knee or hip surgery...
Surgeon Study Finds Correlation Between Skill, Complications
A recent study provided insight into bariatric surgical errors, revealing that the skill of a surgeon largely impacts the likelihood that the patient will experience complications. This conclusion seems straightforward enough, but it's startling that patients of...
The Impact Of Surgical Items Left Inside The Patient
Many things can go wrong during a surgery, but the majority of patients have an operation that is considered successful and they begin healing normally. Incredibly, about 6,000 patients face severe post-surgery complications - including internal infection and wrongful...
Study: Anesthesia Drug Ketamine Harms Children’s Brain Activity
Ketamine is a commonly used anesthetic in pediatric operations, but it may be doing serious damage to young patients. According to a study published in Science Daily, children under age 3 who had lengthy exposure to ketamine during surgery displayed memory problems,...