Ohio Medical Malpractice Lawyer Representing Patients Injured By Surgical Errors
Medical malpractice in Ohio can take many different forms, and health care providers can be negligent in a wide variety of ways. Surgical errors are one particular kind of medical mistake that can result in a successful medical malpractice lawsuit against the negligent surgeon and, in some cases, the hospital where the injury occurred.
Nobody should go into the hospital for a routine surgery only to fall victim to a preventable surgical error that leads to a serious or fatal injury. We should be able to trust that our surgeons will provide a high level of care. Yet surgical mistakes do happen more often than most of us would like to think, and severe and life-threatening injuries often result from those errors. If you suffered an injury because of a surgical error, you should consider filing a medical malpractice lawsuit as soon as possible.
What is a Surgical Error?
A surgical error is a particular type of mistake made by a surgeon or another party during a surgical procedure. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), surgical errors include any mistakes that are made during a surgical procedure. Many surgical mistakes are known as “never events,” meaning that they are “errors that should never occur and indicate serious underlying safety problems.” Common surgical errors include but are not limited to the following:
- Leaving a piece of surgical equipment, such as a sponge or medical instrument, inside the patient’s body;
- Wrong-site error, meaning that the surgeon operates on the wrong part of the patient’s body;
- Wrong-procedure error, meaning that the surgeon performs the wrong surgical procedure on the patient;
- Wrong-patient mistake, meaning that the surgeon performs a particular surgical procedure on the wrong patient; and
- Anesthesia error, in which a patient receives too little or too much anesthesia.
According to the AHRQ, about 59% of all reported surgical errors involve a surgeon operating on the wrong side of a patient’s body (such as a left leg instead of a right leg), while 23% of errors are wrong-site mistakes, 14% are wrong-procedure errors, and about 5% are wrong-patient surgical mistakes.
Statute of Limitations for a Surgical Error Claim in Ohio
In a medical malpractice claim for a surgical error, Ohio law gives patients one year from the date of the surgical error to file a claim for compensation.
However, in some cases, the statute of limitations may be extended for up to four years if the patient could not have reasonably known about the error until some time had passed. For example, when a surgeon leaves a sponge inside a patient’s body, the patient may not have immediate signs or symptoms and may not discover the injury for a year or more after the surgical procedure.
In cases in which the patient could not have discovered the mistake through exercising reasonable care, Ohio law gives the patient one year from the date that she actually discovered or reasonably should have discovered the injury to file her lawsuit. Yet the patient cannot file a medical malpractice claim more than four years after the initial date of the medical malpractice incident that gave rise to the claim.
Contact an Ohio Medical Malpractice Lawyer for Help
If you experienced a surgical error and suffered an injury, you deserve to seek financial compensation. An Ohio medical malpractice lawyer can help you. I have years of experience helping injured patients in Ohio with medical malpractice lawsuits, and I can help you to hold your negligent surgeon accountable. I’ll Make Them Pay!® Contact me at 877.944.4373 today.
