Increase In Operations On “The Wrong” Part Of The Body

An alarming disclosure by the NHS Litigation Authority confirms that there has been a substantial increase in compensation paid out to patients where there has been an operation on “the wrong part of the body”.

The development would be laughable were the consequences for the victims of such accidents not so tragic. Whilst one third of the cases related to teeth, the remainder included operations on the wrong legs, knees and hips.

The cost to the National health service of compensating the victims of “wrong site surgery” rose from £447,694 in 2003-4 to £1,098,975 2005-6 as the number of such inappropriate operations increased by almost 50%.

When set against the number of patients successfully treated within the health service, the proportion of cases of this type is relatively small but here in the South West Foot Anstey are dealing with a number of these case which have not yet progressed to settlement and thus do not appear in the NHS litigation Authority figures.

For each client the experience of suffering surgery to the wrong part of the body is in itself traumatic, fundamentally undermining the trust which a patient places in a surgeon when submitting to surgery. Even where the error is relatively minor, such as an exploratory operation on an uninjured finger, leaving the injured finger untreated, the patient may well have difficulty in summoning the courage to face corrective treatment, fearing a repetition of the earlier error.

In addition to the physical pain of undergoing a second operation to put right the failings of the first and the psychological distress caused by the incident, patients may face financial loss as further surgery requires more time off work, not only for the operation itself but in order to recover from that operation. That loss must also be compensated by the health trust responsible for the error. In some cases the amount of compensation may be relatively modest but serious errors involving entire limbs or major organs can give rise to life changing damage and substantial financial loss.

On the face of it there should be no excuse for operating on the wrong part of the body, modern pre-surgery protocols requiring clear marking of the site of surgery in advance of the operation. At a time when there is much argument over the cost of medical accidents to the National Health Service, a rising number of easily avoidable mistakes such as wrong site surgery simply add to the financial burden and undermine public confidence in the system.

Published 26/04/2007.