Hospital To Pay Up For Screw Left In Body
Neck fusion surgery is becoming more common in the United States as insurance companies tend to reimburse surgeons at a higher rate for it compared with other neck surgeries.
However, neck fusion surgery has not been shown to be safer or more advantageous then non-fusion type neck surgery.
Complications such as death, infection, disability, and pseudoarthrosis are more common with neck fusion surgery.
This story is an example of two bad things happening.
1) A surgeon is alleged to have botched a neck fusion surgery causing unintended damage at other areas of the cervical spine.
2) The cover up. Hospitals and doctors are supposed to ‘first do no harm’. Unfortunately for this woman, this did not occur.
Hospital To Pay Up For Screw Left In Body
Jury Awards Woman More Than $1 Million
A jury ordered a local hospital to pay damages after a screw was left inside a woman’s body during surgery.
A verdict in the civil trial last week awarded more than $1 million in damages for Katherine Flanagan, 49, against Mount Clemens General Hospital and staff neurosurgeon Mark Goldberger, according to The Macomb Daily.
Flanagan claimed malpractice, negligence, pain and suffering, plus extensive costs for her continued care and wrongful concealment of facts about a neck fusion procedure performed on her in February 2002, where Goldberger was the operating surgeon, the paper reported.
Officials said the procedure was supposed to fuse three vertebrae in her spine, but during the surgery a screw was driven into a disk between two vertebrae above the operating area, the paper reported. When Flanagan was sewed up again, the screw was never removed and the hospital allegedly did not tell her about it.
Flanagan had it removed eight months later.
Robert F. Garvey, an attorney for Flanagan in the case, told the paper that by the time the screw was removed it had caused the disc to “deteriorate” and develop symptoms like arthritis.
Garvey told the paper that his client will likely require additional correctional surgery.
The hospital, which Garvey said rejected a mediation proposal to settle the case for $300,000 prior to trial, would not comment on details of the surgery after the verdict, the paper reported.
Jim Perpich, a spokesman for Mount Clemens General, told the paper that the hospital will continue to fight on appeal.
