Examples Of Nerve Damage From Surgery
Watch the video below to learn more about examples of nerve damage from surgery and what to do about this common medical malpractice case.
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The Consequences Of Medical Malpractice
What Is The Difference Between Medical Malpractice And Medical Negligence?
Video Transcript
Regarding examples of nerve damage from surgery, that’s a broad topic.
We know what nerves are; nerves are the tissues that carry electrical signals that allow people to feel and muscles to twitch and move. When a person undergoes surgery, and you’re thinking about how it is that you can avoid nerve injury, it’s almost like talking about, it’s like two different languages, okay?
The first language deals with damage to nerves as a result of the actual procedure you’re doing. What do I mean by that? I’m going to give you some examples. Let’s say that a person has a hip replacement where you go in, and you take out the old bone and saw off the top of the femur, and you know you’re putting in titanium and steel in this socket. In that process, to get in the prosthesis, you necessarily have to elongate or pull the leg, which sometimes causes damage to the operator’s nerve.
There’s a big nerve that runs up in your hip. Now, that’s an example of how doing a particular seizure could cause damage to the nerve or a nerve. Another example is if somebody’s having some type of facial surgery. Some nerves run on the face, and the seventh facial nerve is there.
So let’s say somebody’s having some surgery, bony surgery on the face, and then after the surgery, the whole face doesn’t move anymore because the doctor has quite frankly cut the facial nerve accidentally. You know, those things happen and that is medical negligence.
When doctors are tasked with going in and performing specific surgeries, they must be aware of the anatomy. Most people think that it’s just, you know, second nature, you know. How can a doctor who’s been through four years of medical school go through all this training? How could they just blow it without properly identifying the nerves that you know are necessarily associated with the procedure? Well, it happens. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.
Those are some of the more straightforward cases of medical malpractice because it’s rare that you have a situation where if there’s damage, then that necessarily means that there was negligence. Those cases come close to it because often, with particular surgeries, everybody knows that you have to identify these nerves before you move forward. So that’s one type of nerve damage.
There’s another type; also, this being the second language is when it is due to positioning. If you have prostate surgery and you’re doing it robotically and somebody’s upside down for six hours, you must move and reposition the patient. You’ve got to make sure that elbow pads are in the right spot, and that there are no pressure points that are putting constant pressure on nerves that could cause permanent nerve injury. That’s another situation.
So those are the two scenarios you typically see dealing with nerve injuries. One, again, when there’s injury due to misadventure of the surgeon, they cut a nerve that everybody knows is associated with the procedure, and the second is more positional, and you know, you think about it, you’re unconscious, you’re helpless, you’re subject to the maneuvers of the surgeon and the surgical team, and it’s their responsibility and duty to put you in paths and to put you in a position that’s not putting chronic pressure on nerves where after the surgery you come up and wake up, and you can’t move a leg or an arm.
But if you or any of your family members undergo surgery and you come away with something you didn’t expect, at a minimum, allow somebody like me, an M.D., J.D., or somebody who’s got some kind of medical acumen and medical experience to look closely at the medical records to tell you what happened.
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