When Doctors Perform Unnecessary Operations
There is an old saying that “the only minor surgery is surgery that happens to someone else.” Being operated on can involve having muscles, bones, and our most important vital organs cut into and exposed to open air. As experienced medical malpractice lawyers, we can tell you that surgery can also involve general anesthesia, being ‘put to sleep’ for the length of the operation, which frequently poses its own set of risks including brain damage and death.
Why Do Unnecessary Operations Occur?
These and other dangers can be present even in relatively ‘low risk’ operations, yet there are times when doctors will still opt to recommend surgery even when there are other options such as drugs or physical therapy available. Why is this? For many hospitals and doctors, performing operations can represent a huge financial windfall.
Operations require lots of medical personnel and preparation to perform and the patient will frequently remain as an impatient to recover for days or weeks afterward. All of this is very expensive for the patient or their insurer, but whether or not these operations are recommended by the best medical practices or even necessary is another question.
An article from the New York Times, for example, noted that an operation called spinal fusion continued to be widely performed despite strong evidence that it was not any better than nonsurgical treatments. It can be difficult to figure out exactly how widespread the problem is because neither the federal government nor the states track numbers of unnecessary surgeries.
Moreover, many cases where unnecessary surgeries are alleged to have occurred settle privately, where the person who brought the claim gets paid in exchange for promising not to make his or her allegations of wrongdoing public.
What Can A Lawyer Do For Victims Of Malpractice?
If you or a loved one has undergone an unnecessary medical procedure, it is important to seek legal assistance from an experienced law office. Lawyers can also be used in cases where the practitioner fails to inform the patient about all the possible risks of undergoing a certain operation in advance or in cases of medical malpractice where the doctor makes a mistake. Call the law offices of Michael Lamonsoff today and we will help you to get the recovery you deserve.