Surgical Errors Still Happen

Medical mistakes have been in the spotlight over the last decade, ever since the Institute of Medicine published a report called To Err Is Human. Surgeons were supposed to have adopted procedures to keep them from operating on the wrong patient or the wrong body part. Although this may have become less common, a new study published in the Archives of Surgery suggests that it still happens far too often.
The investigators reviewed more than 27,000 physician reports of problems. In these records, 25 operations were performed on the wrong patient and 107 on the wrong body part. One patient died as a result of such a mistake. Errors in communication were the most common cause of these incidents. Mistaken diagnoses, errors in judgment, and the failure to perform a “time-out” just before surgery to check the procedure were also implicated. Patients should make sure that the correct body part is indicated with permanent marker, and they should ask the team to have a final review just before the surgery.

[Archives of Surgery, Oct. 18, 2010]