Wrong Site Surgeries
Left.
Right.
My patient.
Someone else's patient.
My patient.
One of my other patients.
These really are not difficult concepts. Except that in 1 out of 112,994 surgeries (not including spine surgeries) surgeons perform "wrong site" surgery.
Eighty-fours such errors were reported last year - and reporting is not mandatory in all states.
Spine surgeries were excluded because "surgical sites on the spine are verified with X-rays...." True - but surgeons still operate on L-3 L-4 when they are supposed to operate on L-2 L-3.
Read about it in USA Today. For the complete study from Archives of Surgery click here. One interesting set of stats from the article: "Surgery on the wrong patient occurred in 13% of cases, using the wrong procedure in 11%, and on the wrong body part or site in 76%."