When a surgeon in New York causes an injury to a patient due to failure to exercise a reasonable degree of care, he or she may be held liable. A $30 million settlement recently resulted from a malpractice suit involving surgical errors in another state. The surgeon in this medical malpractice case is said to have done experimental surgeries on a patient who was an infant.
The man reportedly did 25 surgeries on the baby. However, according to the lawsuit, these surgeries led to irreversible brain injury and cerebral palsy. When the child was born in 2009, the infant had health conditions that were not life-threatening, such as an esophageal leak, and underwent surgery multiple times over the span of 17 months.
According to the child’s family, the surgeries were personally irresponsible and medically careless. The operations are also said to have demonstrated a lack of oversight on the part of the hospital. Recent research shows that surgical errors occur in about one out of 10,000 operations and can be deadly or cause long-term problems for the individuals involved.
According to the law, a surgeon is held to the same standard to which other medical professionals are held. A surgeon who deviates from this standard of medical care and causes injuries to a patient as a result may be held liable through the civil court system. Financial restitution from a medical malpractice claim that is successfully litigated in New York may help to cover health care costs, as well as other expenses, linked to the documented incident of medical malpractice.
Source: skylinenewspaper.com, “Surgeon Involved in $30 Million Medical Malpractice Settlement“, March 22, 2016
