Almost every Baltimore resident has had a personal connection to cancer, whether they have personally experienced it or known family or friends who have had cancer. The disease can be devastating for all who are touched by it.
For one man, cancer was just the beginning of other issues. The man had cancer in his left kidney, which prompted doctors to recommend surgery to remove the kidney so the cancer would not spread to other parts of his body. After the man’s kidney was removed in the surgery, however, it was discovered that doctors had made a surgical error by removing the wrong kidney.
The incident of surgeon negligence is now the subject of a medical malpractice action filed by the man against the doctors involved in the surgery. The man is seeking compensation for the radiologist’s mishandling of the CT scan diagnosis and the surgeon’s operation.
While cases like the above may seem incredibly rare, other types of surgical errors happen more commonly than most doctors would like to admit. What’s more, the fact that something does not happen often is of no consolation to those who are injured when errors do occur.
In a medical malpractice suit, the question does not center on how often the event may occur generally. Rather, the question is whether the doctor violated the standard of care, even if it was just on one occasion. Doctors are held to a certain standard in terms of the quality of care they provide to patients. When the standard of care is violated, and that violation caused the patient’s injuries, injured patients can recover a variety of damages.
