Miami Surgical Malpractice Lawyers

Hundreds of Millions Won Since 1984. Investigating Surgical Malpractice Nationwide.

When surgeons commit mistakes, the ramifications are far-reaching...and potentially permanent. For example, take "wrong surgery," or a surgery on the wrong patient, on the wrong site, or with the wrong procedure. Per the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, between five and eight people suffer a "wrong surgery" every month. That's dozens of people a year who have to live with the consequences of a surgeon's or hospital's inexcusable mistake.

Those mistakes don't even address situations where surgeons perform surgeries poorly, well below the standard of care, or while excessively tired or inebriated. When surgeons fail their patients, they deserve to be held accountable for the consequences; that's what our attorneys have been doing since 1984. The Miami surgical malpractice attorneys at Stewart Tilghman Fox Bianchi & Cain, P.A. have won hundreds of millions of dollars for our clients, employing massive investigative resources and a century of collective trial experience to get justice for the injured. As a result, our clients have gotten the medical care, long-term support, and financial stability they needed to move forward.

To speak with surgical malpractice attorney at our firm, call (305) 770-6335 for a free consultation. Our team can listen to your story and explain your legal and financial options.

The Types of Surgical Malpractice

Not all surgical mistakes are the same. Some are the result of procedure, involving multiple at-fault parties. For example, some hospitals now employ a "counting" procedure to ensure all surgical sponges or tools are removed before closing a surgical site; this prevents "retained foreign body" errors. Some are pure negligence, such as issues involving poor or wrong techniques. Other issues of procedure might result in the wrong patient receiving surgery, which can have horrifying consequences. Still others, in the case of same-day surgeries, may iinvolve malpractice by the staff at a surgical center.

Types of surgical malpractice include (but are not limited to):

• Incision errors
• Post-operative peritonitis
• Retained foreign body
• Poor or inappropriate operation technique
• Peri-operative hemorrhage
• Operated on the wrong side
• Operated on the wrong body part
• Wrong procedure
• Wrong patient

With upwards of 50 million surgical procedures every year, it is the responsibility of every healthcare provider to mitigate mistakes through careful procedure and training. When they fail to do so, it makes patients vulnerable to serious or fatal injury. Even survivors still have to recover from their injuries as well as the trauma of suffering a surgical error.

Never Events & Surgical Malpractice

"Wrong surgery" events are part of a larger category of medical mistakes called "never events." First coined in 2001 by Dr. Ken Kizer, never events are medical mistakes that have no excusable cause; they should simply never happen. Surgical never events include surgeries that occur on the wrong part of the body, the wrong side of the body, or the wrong patient. 

They also include the unintentional leaving of a surgical tool or item in a patient after a surgery.

All of these mistakes happen more often than patients realize. In the Journal of the American Medical Association, one peer-reviewed article reported that 12,000 deaths occur a year due to "unnecessary surgery," like wrong patient events. Another healthcare association reported that 1 in 4 orthopedic surgeons will perform a wrong-site surgery at some point.

The Importance of Holding Surgeons Accountable for Surgical Malpractice

Surgeons are not hospital employees; instead, they're given privileges to practice at certain hospitals in a given region. As a result, surgeons who have committed grievous mistakes are able to move from hospital to hospital without being held responsible for the harm they cause. We take surgeons to court for our clients not just because it gets justice for patients; it also keeps our entire community safe from surgeons who make grievous errors in the worst possible circumstances.

For over three decades, STFBC has been a premier nationwide medical malpractice firm. We've held surgeons, hospitals, nursing staffs, and pharmacists accountable in court, helping our clients pay for medical care, replace their lost income, and recover emotionally and financially from their losses. Our Miami surgical error lawyers are renowned across the country for our investigative resources and trial skills, both of which have made it possible for our clients to focus on recovery.

Speak with our nationally-renowned attorneys to learn your legal and financial options in a free consultation. Our firm is taking cases nationwide.