Wrong Site Surgery - Did They Really Cut Off the Wrong Leg?
I know --- it sounds so horrible! Wrong site surgery! A doctor amputating the wrong leg??? But surgery on the wrong body part --- or the wrong patient --- happens. Yes, it is rare. But it occurs far too often in a country that prides itself in having the best medical system in the world. We are talking about a doctor who might amputate the healthy right leg of a patient instead of the diseased left leg, or remove the healthy spleen of the patient in operating room A instead of the diseased gall bladder, and then remove the healthy gall bladder of the patient in operating room B instead of the diseased spleen.
A recent study reports that the problem (albeit still rare) is more common that previously thought and that prevention efforts may be inadequate. Using a variety of sources, physicians Samuel C. Seiden and Paul Barach estimate that wrong site surgery occurs between 1,300 and 2,700 times a year in the U.S.
Reporting wrong site surgery should be mandatory. This suggestion seems obvious, but presently, there is no national requirement for the reporting of these errors.
We support these doctors in exposing the problem, and ask for a national reporting standard of wrong site/wrong patient surgery. Hospitals must be forced to review each case carefully and establish procedures that will make such egregious errors less likely.