The Rise of Lung Surgery Malpractice

In a number of cases, complications associated with lung surgery can develop without any wrongdoing on the part of the surgeon or their medical staff that accompany a patient into the operating room. Even in the event that a doctor, nurse, or other medical professional does commit an error during the surgery that causes a complication, it may not rise to the level needed to be considered medical malpractice.

This is because there are a highly specific number of conditions that need to be met in order for an injury sustained during a lung surgery procedure to be malpractice. First, there must be a duty of care that exists between the individual that is being accused of malpractice and the patient making the accusation. Next, that duty of care must have been breached in some way by the accused. On top of that, the breach in that duty of care must involve a deviation from accepted standards within the medical community when it comes to the procedure that was performed. It’s this third requirement, the deviation from accepted standards, that can be the hardest to prove in a civil case.

The last two requirements, which call for an injury being suffered by the patient and that injury leading to damages, are usually not in question. If someone’s lung is collapsed and it suffers trauma as medical staff try unsuccessfully to re-inflate it, the damage done by the injury is obvious and apparent. However, this means that even patients that suffer grievous injury from a lung surgery may not be able to make a claim for compensation if that third requirement isn’t met. This is a relatively rare occurrence, though; the amount of damage needed to sustain such trauma is usually so egregious that it could not have occurred unless a surgeon did indeed deviate from accepted practices.

If you think you have a case against the surgeon that performed your procedure, you need to contact a law firm with skilled and experienced attorneys that specialize in professional negligence and medical malpractice cases. You may be entitled to compensation for any pain, suffering, or physical damage you have sustained as a result of a legitimately botched lung surgery.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/health/guides/surgery/lung-surgery/overview.html