Surgeon Mistakenly Removes Liver

I’m David Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

Today’s podcast discusses an issue reported in the news not long ago. The news report was that a surgeon mistakenly removed a patient’s liver during surgery instead of the patient’s spleen. The mistake cost the patient his life.

From a legal perspective, this medical mistake should result in civil liability for the surgeon and the hospital that authorized the surgeon to perform surgery. It also quite possibly will result in criminal charges against the surgeon.

I encountered a similar scenario about 30 years ago. A surgeon removed several vertebrae from the patient’s spine, resulting in immediate paralysis.

Upon investigation after the surgery, it was determined that the surgeon was addicted to a controlled substance. At the time of the surgery, he was having a hallucinatory episode, which caused him to believe that his surgery would improve the patient’s condition. Eventually, this surgeon was convicted of assault and battery and sentenced to prison.

Back to the news report of a surgeon mistakenly removing a patient’s healthy liver. I would think that there should be an immediate alcohol and drug test administered to the surgeon that removed the liver instead of the spleen.

This error is normally described as a never event, meaning it should never happen.

If the surgeon learned anything in medical school, he or she would know the difference between a liver and a spleen on simple observation. The organs are located in different locations in the body anatomically.

Further, the hospital that authorized the surgeon to perform surgery would have to answer civilly for many things, including what procedures were in place to confirm to everyone before surgery began the focus of the surgery. Before the surgery began, did everyone in the surgical room agree on the type of surgery that would be undertaken? In other words, was it announced that this was a surgery to remove the patient’s spleen because of a disease?

There would seem to be no justification in any event ever to remove a patient’s liver unless there’s going to be a transplant.

If, before raising a scalpel, the surgeon announced, “Now we are going to remove this patient’s liver,” you would expect everyone to tackle the surgeon and confiscate the knife.

If the announcement was, “Now we are going to remove the patient’s spleen,” others in the room should have become suspicious when the surgeon began cutting on the wrong side of the chest that something was terribly wrong and interrupted the surgery.

Moreover, you would expect that any nurse, anesthesiologist, or any other tech assisting in the room would have screamed out to the surgeon to stop if it was observed that the surgeon was removing the patient’s liver.

Further, had any of the participants observed that the liver was removed, you would expect that the liver would be replaced immediately to correct that mistake. Perhaps a special team of transplant vascular specialty surgeons could have been called to correct the error.

Did the hospital check the surgeon’s credentials before giving the surgeon staff privileges?

In the case, I described above that led to a patient’s paralysis, one of the assisting surgeons immediately called security to escort the intoxicated surgeon from the room. Then the surgical team did their best to try to repair the damage to the patient.

Unfortunately, there was a history of that particular surgeon being observed to be under the influence of drugs.

Was the surgeon who removed the liver under the influence of drugs at the time of the procedure? Had that surgeon been observed by others to be under the influence at other times?

Should the hospital have pulled the plug on the surgeon well before this particular event occurred? Was a program to require random drug and alcohol screenings in place?

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – while there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”