Maryland medical malpractice attorney Marcus Boston explains why not all surgical error cases will be successful as a Maryland medical malpractice case. First, surgical errors can have a devastating effect on a patient. For example, if a doctor cuts off the wrong limb, or operates on the wrong area of the body, the patient is generally going to suffer serious complications as a result of this. But what you must understand is that there will always be some risk associated with a operation or surgical procedure.
What I want to get more in-depth about during this video is helping you understand when a doctor’s actions can possibly approach the grounds of medical malpractice here in Maryland. The best way to explain this is through examples. Lets say you go in to have your gallbladder removed and the doctor cuts your bile duct. Now, in this type of procedure the doctor is not supposed to cut your bile duct. But let’s say that the doctor notices the cut and fixes it immediately. The patient is then closed up and does not complain of any future issues. Even though a surgical error occurred, this would probably not be a successful Maryland medical malpractice case because the doctor saw the error and fixed it right away. Also, because the patient did not have any other complications associated with the procedure.
Now lets suppose in the same gallbladder surgery example that the doctor did not notice that he had cut the bile duct and sent the patient home. The patient is then brought back to the hospital a week or so later with a massive abdominal infection and renal failure. The cut to the bile duct is finally found after a week. This would probably be a successful Maryland medical malpractice case.
You should be able to see the differences between the two cases, namely one doctor noticing the medical error and fixing it right away, while the other doctor not noticing the error, causing the patient a host of serious problems. One more quick example. A doctor performing an abdominal hysterectomy crushes the femoral nerve by improper placement of the retractors. The patient then goes on to suffer severe injury as a result of the doctor’s actions.
So why am I educating you on this important issue in the law? Because you probably have questions regarding your situation. You are probably wondering right now if you should speak to someone about your surgical error. Here’s what you do. Pick up the phone and give me a call. I can be reached at 301-850-4832. Or, if you would rather send an email send an email to medicalinjury “at” bostonlawllc.com (Remember to replace the “at” with @. We write the email this way to combat email spammers). We answer questions like yours all the time and we would be glad to hear your story.
