Surgical errors can be medical malpractice if a surgeon’s negligent conduct falls below the accepted standard of care as compared to reasonably competent surgeons practicing that area of surgery under similar circumstances, and a patient is harmed as a result.

Surgical errors are mistakes that are preventable. Although some surgical errors are the direct result of a physician’s incompetence, most result from poor preoperative planning or inadequate procedures or work processes.

According to Attorneys.com, thousands of patients suffer from surgical errors every year in U.S. hospitals. A 1999 Institute of Medicine study estimated that medical errors, including those from surgery, affect 44,000 to 98,000 patients each year. Surgeries made necessary as a result of auto accidents, heart problems, joint replacement, organ transplants, and other circumstances all have their share of surgical complications that can lead to errors amounting to malpractice.

Examples of Surgical Errors

Surgical errors may include:

• Wrong-site surgery
• Incorrect incisions
• Leaving equipment inside a patient
• Operating on the wrong patient
• Nerve damage
• Anesthesiology errors

Although every surgical procedure involves some degree of risk or complication, such as heart failure or stroke, and patients are required to sign implied consent documents advising them of known risks, errors such as these go beyond accepted risks.

Causes of Surgical Errors

Physicians and their staff generally follow standard protocols before, during, and after surgical procedures. Regardless of these protocols, errors can still occur as a result of contributing factors such as:

Inadequate preoperative planning-Medical staff must have a patient’s complete medical history, including reactions to medications, and must evaluate the risks of a particular surgery on the patient.

Miscommunication-A nurse or other staff may misidentify a patient or incorrectly mark the wrong site for surgery. A surgeon may be misinformed about other material issues affecting the surgery, or may misread a drug’s dosage or the patient’s reaction to a drug. All surgical equipment must be accounted for after a procedure, but surgical sponges or other equipment sometimes do end up in a patient’s body cavity after a surgery is concluded.

Fatigue or under the influence-Surgeons and staff work long hours and have been known to be intoxicated or to have taken drugs to stay alert. Consequently, their judgment can be impaired.

Neglect-The failure to properly sterilize instruments or the use of defective surgical instruments can lead to infection, septic shock, and other life-threatening conditions.

Incompetence-Surgeons must endure years of rigorous study and training, but not all possess the skills and competence to perform surgical procedures commensurate with the standard of reasonably competent surgeons.

If you or your family member has suffered an injury due to medical malpractice please contact us todayat Golden Law Office at 859-469-5000 or email info@goldenlawoffice.com

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Driving Around School

Everyone is heading back to school this month, which means more teen drivers will be on the roads heading to school and after school activities.

Teendriving.com wants to remind all teen drivers to be mindful when driving around your school’s campus, or even just when parking there.

Here are some tips to keep in mind:

• Always stop for school buses with flashing lights. The flashing lights mean that students are either getting on or off the bus, and may be crossing the street. Their safety depends on cars obeying this law.
• Don’t park in fire lanes around the school. Not only will you probably get a ticket, but you could be blocking the area where a fire truck might need to par
• Try to get to school five to ten minutes early, and leave five minutes late to avoid the mad dash into and out of the parking lot. Lots of accidents happen when people are rushing around.
• Always watch for kids getting on and off school buses.
• If your school lot has perpendicular spaces (not angled parking), park in a space you can pull straight out of instead of having to back out. Backing out in crowded lots is always tricky.
• Don’t leave valuables like wallets, shoes, laptops, jackets, phones, or sports equipment in your car where they can be seen easily.

For more teen driving safety tips, go to: https://teendriving.com/driving-tips/on-the-road/

If you or your family member has suffered personal injury due to a driving accident please contact us today at Golden Law Office at 859-469-5000 or email info@goldenlawoffice.com

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According to the Huffington Post, expecting mothers, or even women looking to get pregnant, should know the right questions to ask to find the highest-value pregnancy provider. Beyond the physical and psychological strength required during pregnancy, your finances must be equally strong to accommodate the many costs of having a baby. One study reported the average out-of-pocket cost for insured patients in 2010 was $2,200 for a vaginal birth and $2,700 for a cesarean birth. The billed charges for vaginal and cesarean births were found to be approximately $30,000 and $50,000, respectively.

With the prospect of these huge costs, you will want to control expenses without sacrificing quality of care – which means that choosing both a high-value pregnancy provider and the right hospital for giving birth is important. In your search for a quality ob-gyn, here are a few things you should find out to help determine if he or she is a fit for your pregnancy.

1. His or her historical stats.
   An ob-gyn’s track record can give you confidence in their abilities and reveal trends in their decisions. Make sure to discuss rate of cesarean sections, assisted vaginal deliveries, and how often they have had successful vaginal births following cesarean section. These questions can help you determine how likely it is that a provider will perform one procedure over another given circumstances that you might encounter.

2. Whether or not he or she works with midwives.
   Midwives, while popular around the world, deliver fewer than 10 percent of babies in America. However, it has been shown that women with low-risk pregnancies undergo fewer medical interventions and deliver healthy babies when giving birth under the direction of a midwife, as opposed to an ob-gyn or family physician. Some pregnancy providers may work with midwives, so check whether this is an option with your ob-gyn of choice.

3. The practice’s availability in case of emergency.
   If a suspected emergency occurs in the middle of the night, will you be able to call your ob-gyn or one of their colleagues for advice? This accessibility of care can help you avoid unnecessary hospitalization, and give you further piece of mind — pregnancy comes with weekly changes that can be unsettling if you aren’t expecting them.

4. Strategy for handling high-risk pregnancies.
   If your pregnancy is or becomes high-risk, you want to be sure that your doctor or one of his or her colleagues can handle it with expertise. If your ob-gyn isn’t a high-risk provider, you should ask if they have relationships with high-risk providers who can take over your care, should it become necessary.

5. How your medical records are kept.
   If your ob-gyn is unavailable at a critical moment, other caretakers will need to know your medical history in order to avoid unnecessary or duplicate medications, tests or procedures. Ensuring that there is a smooth flow of information between anyone who might require it, from prenatal to delivery to postpartum care, can help to prevent confusion and overlap.

6. His or her practices to promote maternal-infant bonding.
   It has been shown that immediate skin-to-skin contact post-delivery is physiologically beneficial to a newborn. Also ask if they allow the infant to remain in the room, which encourages breastfeeding, or if they offer in-house breastfeeding support.

For more information regarding questions you should ask your Ob-Gyn, go to: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/napala-pratini/6-things-your-ob-gyn-wont-tell-you-unless-you-ask_b_5127058.html

If you or your baby has been affected due to OB-Gyn medical malpractice please contact us today at Golden Law Office at 859-469-5000 or email info@goldenlawoffice.com

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What this recall means to you and what actions you should take

According to NBC News, a recall of air bags made by Japanese auto parts supplier Takata Corp. now has the dubious distinction of being the largest in U.S. history.

The number of vehicles in the U.S. being recalled because of the defective air bags is doubling to 34 million, safety regulators said Tuesday May 19, 2015.

According to Consumer Reports, at the heart of the problem is the airbag’s inflator, a metal cartridge loaded with propellant wafers, which in some cases has ignited with explosive force. If the inflator housing ruptures in a crash, metal shards from the airbag can be sprayed throughout the passenger cabin-a potentially disastrous outcome from a supposedly life-saving device.

Nailing down the root cause and determining which of Takata’s several inflator designs is implicated has been tough for Takata, the automakers, and independent investigators to establish. It now appears there are multiple causes, as well as several contributing factors, including poor quality control in manufacture, several years of exposure in high heat and humidity regions, and even the design of the car itself. If the propellant wafers break down, due to high humidity or another cause, the result is that the propellant burns too rapidly, creating excessive pressure in the inflator body.

Putting the dangers in perspective

Eight fatalities and more than 100 injuries have been linked to the Takata airbags, and in some cases the incidents were horrific, with metal shards penetrating a driver’s face and neck. As awful as they are, such incidents are very rare. In June of 2015, Takata stated that it was aware of 88 ruptures in total: 67 on the driver’s side and 21 on the passenger’s side out of what it calculated was just over 1.2 million airbag deployments spread over 15 years. Despite these figures, airbags in general are not a danger. The Department of Transportation estimates that between 1987 and 2012, frontal airbags have saved 37,000 lives.

Based on information provided by Takata and acting under a special campaign by NHTSA, the involved automakers are responding to this safety risk by recalling all vehicles that have these specific airbags. While the automakers are prioritizing resources by focusing on high-humidity areas, they shouldn’t stop there. We encourage a national approach to the risks, as vehicles tend to travel across state borders, especially in the used-car market.

How do I know whether my car is affected by the recall?

There are several ways to check whether your specific car is affected. You’ll need your vehicle identification number, VIN, found in the lower driver-side corner of the windshield (observable from outside the vehicle), as well as on your registration and insurance documents. Punch that number into NHTSA’s online VIN lookup tool. If your vehicle is affected, the site will tell you so. NHTSA also has a list of vehicles available for a quick review, and the manufacturers have ownership sections on their websites for such information. Or you can call any franchised dealer for your car brand.

For more information regarding this recall and to see a list of models/makes affected, go to:https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/10/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-takata-air-bag-recall/index.htm

If you have been injured due to this recall please contact us today at Golden Law Office at 859-469-5000 or email info@goldenlawoffice.com

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