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Medical malpractice claims and maims thousands of lives
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Scientists are concerned about the alarming figures. So-called “never events,” which means “unacceptable incidents,” occur at least four thousand times a year in the United States alone.
Scientists from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore conducted research to determine the true scale of the problem and understand how often errors are made by medical workers. Experts note that between 1990 and 2010, more than 80,000 such incidents occurred.
The researchers' results are based on data provided by the National Bank of Medical Information, a registry that records all data on errors made by doctors.
As it turns out, doctors' mistakes, made for various reasons, including negligence, are not that rare. Just imagine, there are 39 cases a week when various objects are forgotten in a patient during operations. But that's not all. Someone's doctor will leave an unexpected gift inside the body, and someone will simply operate on the wrong part of the body. Cases when patients are operated on in the wrong place occur 20 times a week. The most common objects that are removed from patients' bodies are sponges and towels.
The fact that over 80,000 such terrible medical "blunders" have occurred in the United States alone over the past twenty years suggests that there are actually many more. A person comes to the hospital and complains of feeling unwell or in pain - and so the medical errors are corrected and foreign objects are removed from his body. But just think how many of those still live with some instrument in their body and do not even know about it. Of course, there is still the possibility that a forgetful surgeon himself will miss his instruments, then everything that was sewn up in the patient will be removed much faster.
"There are errors in healthcare that cannot be prevented, no matter how hard you try. For example, even if you make every effort, it is impossible to prevent the spread of infection. However, situations like when a surgeon forgets an instrument in his patient can be reduced to zero, or at least to a minimum. However, this study and the figures we presented are direct evidence that there is a lot of work to do and the day when the number of doctors' errors will begin to decline is still far away," says the lead author of the study, MD Marty Makaria.
The researchers hope that the scale of the problem being studied will prompt doctors and regulatory authorities to develop a more effective monitoring system.
Over more than 20 years, there were 9,744 cases of medical malpractice, costing $1.3 billion in total compensation to victims.
According to experts, 6.6% of patients did not survive due to medical errors, 32.9% developed chronic diseases. There are also those who got off with a light fright - 59.2%.
In addition to surgical errors, there are others. For example, patients are often "treated" with the wrong drugs or given the wrong dose, women who seek help from artificial insemination are inseminated with the sperm of the wrong donor, people are operated on in the wrong place, and sometimes the wrong person ends up on the operating table. Take care of yourself!