Spinal surgery gone wrong? If you’re facing paralysis, nerve damage, or chronic pain after a procedure like a spinal fusion or a laminectomy, a surgical error may be to blame. Spinal cord injuries from back or neck surgery are among the most serious medical mistakes. These errors are legally actionable, meaning you may have grounds for a spinal surgery malpractice claim if your surgery failed and caused you further harm.
Errors in surgery are a common form of medical negligence. These preventable mistakes can cause serious complications, ranging from infections, permanent nerve damage and paralysis, worsening injury, and even death. In this article, we’ll explain how surgical errors in the operating room can cause botched spinal surgeries and pave the way for a lawsuit.
If you’re considering filing a spinal cord injury claim after a failed surgery, an experienced medical malpractice lawyer can help you understand your options.
Is spinal surgery dangerous?
Before diving into specific surgical errors, let’s address this common question. Like any operation, spinal surgery comes with inherent risks. While it is generally safe, potential complications include internal bleeding, surgical site infections, blood clots, or adverse reactions to medications like anesthesia. The most serious risk of all involves direct damage to the spinal cord, which could potentially cause paralysis or other neurological deficits.
Although there are certain risks, most spinal cord surgeries are successful, and potential complications shouldn’t scare you away from seeking medical help. Moreover, your doctor should discuss the risks of your specific surgery well before the operation so you can make informed decisions about your treatment.
Surgical Errors That May Cause Spinal Injuries
These are direct mistakes made during surgery that can lead to spinal cord damage. Some of them are exclusive to spinal cord surgery, while others may occur during surgery on nearby body parts. Preventable mistakes like these can result in devastating spinal cord injuries, leaving patients in debilitating pain or taking away their ability to walk forever. If you are currently living in the aftermath of these mistakes, we encourage you to seek legal advice from a qualified surgery malpractice lawyer who can uncover the root cause of your botched surgery.
Wrong Level Surgeries
Operating on the incorrect spinal cord segment is a classic example of a preventable surgical error. This means the surgery fails to address the patient’s actual issue, and could very easily damage otherwise healthy structures. For example, a surgeon may perform a laminectomy on spinal levels L3-L4 instead of L4-L5, removing tissue and decreasing compression in the wrong area.
This error is surprisingly common. It can be caused by unclear imaging from MRIs and CT scans, failure to account for anatomical variation in patients, or a simple failure to verify the correct site before an operation. For patients with back pain, this can happen during surgeries that are meant to treat conditions like spinal stenosis, a herniated disc, bone spurs, or other conditions that compress nerves in the spinal cord.
Retained Surgical Items
Though it might be hard to believe, surgeons sometimes mistakenly leave medical equipment inside patients’ bodies after surgery. This is called “retained surgical items” or “retained surgical foreign bodies” (RBS), and it happens as often as every 0.3-1 in 1,000 surgeries. In spinal surgeries, this can cause inflammation, infection, or direct compression of the spinal cord or nerve roots.
Retained objects may include soft items like sponges or gauze, or hard items like blades, surgical instruments, or fragments of equipment, with sponges being the most common left-behind item. A retained sponge, for example, could cause an epidural abscess, compressing the spinal cord, leading to nerve damage, and warranting emergency surgery. This could easily be avoided with a simple pre- and post-operative checklist, and would constitute a gross negligence claim against the healthcare provider.
Improper Placement of Hardware (Pedicle Screw Misplacement)
In a spinal fusion surgery, two or more spinal bones (vertebrae) are conjoined to stabilize the spine and relieve pain. Surgeons use bone graft material to join the different segments together, and fixate the connection with screws or rods. If these hardware pieces are placed too deeply or at the wrong angle, the spinal canal can become penetrated or dangerously compressed.
The consequences of improper hardware placement vary in seriousness, from numbness and incontinence to permanent paralysis. In 2020, a California patient was rendered paraplegic as a result of pedicle screw misplacement malpractice, for which a jury awarded her $14.9 million in damages.
Failure to Stop Bleeding (Hematoma)
This is a broad form of surgical malpractice that can happen during many different procedures, and is especially dangerous during spinal surgery. In the worst cases, a surgeon’s failure to stop bleeding during or after spinal surgery could result in an epidural or cervical hematoma, or a pool of blood building up in the spinal canal. If doctors fail to diagnose this and drain the blood quickly, the pressure from a hematoma can compress the spinal cord, causing nerve damage. This has led to several multi-million dollar medical malpractice settlements.
A doctor’s failure to manage surgical bleeding may occur due to poor technique, and is further exacerbated by inadequate monitoring after the procedure. This can constitute a medical negligence claim if the patient suffers harm, substantiated by the surgeon’s neglect to respond to a serious postoperative problem. Oftentimes, patients won’t feel the symptoms of a hematoma until hours or days after a surgery, once they’ve already left the hospital. At this point, time is of the essence, and without quick surgical intervention, the patient could suffer lifelong paralysis.
Excessive Decompression
Spinal decompression surgery is used to treat patients whose spinal cord vertebrae are compressing their nerves, causing pain or numbness. These surgeries typically involve a laminectomy or discectomy procedure, removing pieces of vertebrae or spinal discs to create more space in the spinal canal. However, when too much tissue is removed, the spine can become destabilized and expose the spinal cord to serious injury.
This excessive decompression can lead to a laminectomy lawsuit or discectomy lawsuit if the patient suffers harm. This can happen to patients being treated for conditions like spinal stenosis and scoliosis, or even less severe impairments like herniated discs or sciatica.
Medical Attorneys at Stalwart Law
At Stalwart Law, our medical malpractice team has a deep understanding of the various forms of spinal surgery malpractice, and we wield the legal and medical knowledge necessary to uncover the negligence behind your injury. No one should ever have to suffer the physical and emotional toll that these disasters take on people’s lives. In an instant, a person’s ability to walk, work, or care for themselves can be taken away, not by an accident or underlying condition, but by an easily avoidable mistake in the operating room. If this has happened to you or someone you love, please know that you are not alone.
Our team delivers groundbreaking verdicts in this complex area of law, securing the lifesaving compensation needed to right the wrongs of negligent healthcare professionals and protect you and your family as you move forward. We work with top medical professionals to uncover the truth behind your spinal cord injury, and we will fight with tenacity until our demands for your family are met, whether in negotiations with insurance companies or in a trial.
You’ve already been through the unthinkable. Now it’s time for someone to fight for you and tell your story with conviction. If you’re ready to have your voice heard, contact the spinal cord injury lawyers and medical attorneys at Stalwart today. We are here to serve you.
