Surgical Errors

Surgical errors cover a range of negligent acts and omissions in connection with operative care, including wrong-site surgery, wrong-procedure surgery, retained foreign objects, failures of pre-operative assessment, intraoperative technical errors, failures of intraoperative monitoring, anaesthetic complications, and inadequate post-operative care. Delayed recognition of post-operative complications such as bowel perforation, internal bleeding, anastomotic leak, and compartment syndrome is a recurring theme in the case law.

The standard of care in surgery is specialty-specific. A general surgeon is not held to the standard of a vascular surgeon performing the same procedure, and a community-hospital surgeon is not held to the standard of a tertiary-care specialist. The standard is shaped by the relevant specialty’s training, guidelines, and prevailing practice, although in litigation it must be proven through expert evidence. Some surgical errors are categorized as “never events” because they should never occur with appropriate processes in place. Wrong-site surgery and retained foreign objects are the classic examples. Never events tend to attract direct institutional liability claims alongside individual practitioner claims, since they typically indicate systemic process failures.

Posts tagged Surgical Errors analyze Ontario decisions across multiple surgical specialties, with particular attention to the operative-record evidence, intraoperative decision making, and the timing of recognition of post-operative complications.