7 Emergency Surgeries Cause 80% of Deaths & Costs; Medical Errors Still Major Problem
Seven emergency surgeries account for 80 percent of deaths and costs, according to a new study. These procedures are mostly related to the organs of the digestive system: removing part of the colon, small-bowel resection, removing the gallbladder, operations related to peptic ulcer disease, removing abdominal adhesions, appendectomy and other operations to open the abdomen. Click here for the JAMA abstract. Click here for the report.
Medical errors in health-care facilities are incredibly common and may now be the third-leading cause of death in the United States — claiming 251,000 lives every year, more than respiratory disease, accidents, stroke and Alzheimer’s. This is according to new research released last week in the BMJ. Martin Makary, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who led the research, said that the category includes everything from bad doctors to more systemic issues such as communication breakdowns when patients are handed off from one department to another. Click here for the BMJ study. Click here for the Washington Post story.
Beware of retrospective reviews. It's easy to look back at cases and say that if this or that could have been done differently the patient would have survived. In practice these patients often have multiple comorbidities and are terrible surgical candidates. If surgery is chosen to avoid certain death from the condition it's a stretch to claim these patients would breeze through recovery if no errors occur. Yes errors occur and physicians and hospitals should be better about addressing individual and system failures (like pilots and the FAA do), but the number being tossed around these days is overstated. A less punitive and more cooperative atmosphere in hospitals would be a good start for improving the error rate
Practitioner & Promoter of the Shewhart/Deming Management Method (SPC/14 Points) and the System of Profound Knowledge
8 年Important information to know.
Bariatric Surgeon at University of Iowa
8 年Totally agree with Dr. Lim. Reading this article and thinking that these surgeries are the leading causes of death and morbidity is like thinking smoking cessation interventions are the leading cause of death and morbidity in the US rather than tobacco use itself.
Vice-Chair of Education, Professor of Surgery
8 年This article isn't saying that its the surgery that causes the death as a title including "medical errors" suggests; rather it is pointing to the serious nature of these diseases. While any General Surgeon knows full when the potentially disastrous nature of these diseases, perhaps all healthcare providers should be reminded of it.
Chargemaster Manager at Parkland Hospital
8 年Sounds like B.S. to me. I would think Emergency Surgeries would be related to Trauma induced injuries, or ruptured/fistulated organs.