When you go into a hospital or surgical facility for any type of surgery, you are of course a bit nervous. However, you are relying on the surgeon, nurses, and other medical staff to ensure all goes well with your procedure. Unfortunately, that does not always happen. In fact, surgical errors occur on an almost daily basis in the United States, leaving patients and their families devastated. If you emerged from surgery worse than you were before, here are four signs you need to contact a lawyer.
Nerve Damage
Depending upon the type of surgery you had, it is possible your surgeon may have made mistakes when making incisions into certain parts of your body. If so, they may have cut into nerves, leaving you with nerve damage that may or may not heal up. As a result, you could find yourself unable to use your arm, hand, or leg, or perhaps be left with numbness that may never disappear.
Surgery on the Wrong Part of Your Body
This is one of the more severe and obvious signs that you need to contact a lawyer, but nontheless important. While you never thought it could happen to you, the fact is surgeons operate on the wrong parts of their patient’s bodies on a regular basis throughout the United States. Unfortunately, this can result in limbs being wrongly amputated or other severe complications that can forever change your life.
Equipment or Sponges Inside Your Body
During your surgery, the doctor used a variety of specialized tools when performing the operation. Along the way, numerous sponges were also used to clean areas of blood and other bodily fluids, allowing the surgeon to have a better view of the area on which they were operating. While all equipment and sponges are supposed to be accounted for prior to closing the incision, mistakes are regularly made by staff. As a result, you could be left with severe pain, damage to internal organs, and other serious complications.
Anesthesiology Errors
To perform your surgery, your doctor and staff had an anesthesiologist administer the right amount of gas and medicine to put you to sleep during the surgery and to also monitor the levels of anesthesia during surgery to make sure you were safe. However, if mistakes were made in this part of your surgery, you may have been left with certain types of brain damage or other complications, many of which are irreversible.
If you suffered any of these or other complications following your surgery, contact a medical malpractice lawyer.
Author information: Anica Oaks is a professional content and copywriter who graduated from the University of San Francisco. She loves dogs, the ocean, and anything outdoor-related. She was raised in a big family, so she’s used to putting things to a vote. Also, cartwheels are her specialty.
