The Brutal Facts
The following statistics provide a clear picture of just how frequent medical malpractice involving anesthesia really is:
· In 2002, 467 medical malpractice payments were made due to anesthesia-related malpractice.
· In 2002, $338,190 was the mean medical malpractice payment made due to anesthesia-related malpractice.
· Almost 6,000 anesthesia-related medical malpractice payments were made from 1990-2002, and in those years, $245,935 was the average payment for anesthesia malpractice.
While anesthesia injuries are most often thought of as occurring in the operating room, they can occur in a wide variety of settings including the pre-operative and recovery rooms, a procedure room, during labor and child delivery, during sedation for certain dental procedures, and during a wide variety of out-patient medical procedures in doctors' offices and surgery clinics.
Who Can Be Responsible?
Contrary to popular belief, anesthesia medical malpractice cases are not limited to anesthesiologists since nowadays a great many medical practitioners administer sedatives and anesthetics. Having specialized training and certification is one way to reduce the risk to the patient, and it is highly likely that the seriousness and rate of complication increases substantially outside the setting of an operating room with an anesthesiologist present. Extremely severe complications and even deaths have occurred in surgery clinics and dentist offices during procedures that required general anesthesia; trained anesthesia staff were typically absent in the majority of these cases.
Potential defendants in anesthesia-related medical malpractice cases can include anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, nurses, surgeons, doctors, dentists, and residents. Demonstrating the negligence of the anesthesiologist or anesthesia staff is also among the most difficult since the plaintiff is often unconscious or sedated at the time of the malpractice, and unreliable and scant records are often the only source of information as to what actually happened.
Because the patient is sedated or unconscious at the time the anesthesia malpractice occurs, it is imperative that a record of the goings-on before, during and after the procedure be accurately kept and preserved. A serious injury or death will draw the immediate attention of all the medical professionals involved, and, unfortunately, medical records are often altered or even "lost" after mistakes happen. Only careful inspection of medical records will reveal any alterations; therefore, appropriate document analysts should be employed by your medical malpractice attorneys to help with your case.
Handling the personal injury case that arises from anesthesia medical malpractice requires the skill of an experienced medical malpractice attorney. Efforts to preserve medical evidence must be immediate, and a deep understanding of medicine with great attention to detail is imperative on the part of your legal representative.