If you were seriously harmed by a mistake during surgery or in the care that followed it, a New York City surgical error lawyer can help you hold the responsible provider accountable and recover what the error cost you. A surgical error claim is a type of medical malpractice case, and it turns on whether the care met the accepted standard rather than on whether the outcome was bad.
Patients are usually told two things after a surgery goes wrong: that this is a known risk, and that everything possible was done. Sometimes both are true. Sometimes the operative report, the anesthesia record, and the nursing notes from the following night say something different. Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower obtains those records and tells you which it is. Below are the questions patients and families ask our surgical error attorneys most.
Call us at (212) 732-4992 24/7 to arrange to speak with a personal injury lawyer about your case, or contact us through our website today.
You may have a case if a surgeon, an anesthesiologist, a nurse, or a hospital departed from accepted practice before, during, or after your operation, and that departure caused you harm. The injury does not have to have happened at the operating table. A significant share of surgical cases are about what happened in the hours and days afterward. Having the records reviewed by a qualified physician costs you nothing.
No. Every operation carries risks, and some complications occur even when the surgery was performed carefully by a skilled surgeon. Bleeding, infection, scarring, and injury to nearby structures are genuine risks of certain procedures.
What turns a complication into a case is one of two things. Either the injury itself was avoidable and reflects a departure from careful technique or judgment, or the complication was a recognized risk that the team then failed to identify and treat in time. The second category is far larger than most patients realize.
Some surgical errors are not judgment calls at all. They are events that should never happen in a functioning operating room, and hospitals have specific protocols designed to prevent each of them:
Because the safeguards for these are formal, including surgical time-outs, site marking, and instrument counts, the record usually shows plainly whether they were done. The counts, the checklist, and the time-out documentation are among the first records our surgical error lawyers ask for.
Anesthesia has its own set of failures and its own record. Cases arise from airway problems during intubation, oxygen levels that dropped and were not corrected quickly enough, dosing errors, sedation given without adequate monitoring, aspiration, allergic and malignant reactions that were not recognized, and pre-operative assessments that missed a heart, lung, or airway risk that should have changed the plan.
The anesthesia record documents vital signs at close intervals throughout the procedure, so unlike much of medicine, this is an area where the minutes are written down. Medication problems around surgery also overlap with our medication error page.
This is the question behind most serious surgical cases. A complication develops, the signs are there, and the response comes too late. Post-operative bleeding, infection and sepsis, an anastomotic leak, compartment syndrome, a blood clot traveling to the lungs, and a failing organ all follow a pattern of deterioration that shows up in vital signs, laboratory results, urine output, and pain that is out of proportion to what was expected.
The record in these cases tells a familiar story. A nurse documents falling blood pressure and rising heart rate over a shift, calls are made, the covering physician does not come, and by morning the patient needs emergency surgery or has died. Failure to recognize and respond to a complication is a departure in its own right, separate from whatever caused the complication in the first place.
Consent is not a signature on a form. A patient is entitled to be told, in a way they can understand, what the procedure involves, its material risks, the alternatives, and what is likely to happen without it. A claim exists where a reasonable person, properly informed, would have chosen differently.
Consent also covers who performs the operation and what is done. Where a different surgeon operated than the one a patient chose, where a resident performed portions of a procedure without the patient's knowledge, or where a substantially different or additional procedure was performed without consent, that is its own issue in the case.
It depends on who did what and who employed them. Claims run against the surgeon, assistant surgeons and residents, anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists, operating room and recovery room nurses, the covering physicians responsible for post-operative care, the hospital or ambulatory surgery center for its staff, staffing, and protocols, and in some cases the manufacturer of a device or implant that failed.
Surgery at a public hospital, including the city's public hospital system, runs on a different track as a municipal liability claim with a ninety day notice requirement. Related failures are covered on our failure to diagnose and birth injury pages, since cesarean section injuries involve both areas.
Surgery generates unusually detailed records, and they are the case. Our surgical error lawyers obtain the operative report along with the date and time it was dictated, which sometimes matters a great deal, the anesthesia record with its interval vital signs, the surgical checklist and time-out documentation, sponge, needle, and instrument counts, implant and device stickers with their lot numbers, pathology reports describing what was actually removed, imaging before and after, recovery room and floor nursing notes, rapid response and code records, and the complete post-operative chart including who was called and when.
Electronic records carry an audit trail showing when entries were made and changed, which matters when an operative note was written after a complication became apparent. Where a device or implant failed, it should be preserved after removal rather than discarded.
Surgeons and anesthesiologists in the relevant specialties review all of it. New York requires a lawyer to confirm with a qualified physician that there is a genuine basis for the claim before filing.
Generally two years and six months from the malpractice, with several variations that matter here. The continuous treatment rule can move the start date where the same provider kept treating you for the same condition. Where an object was left inside the body, the deadline is one year from the date it was discovered or reasonably should have been, which is often years later. Children get extended time subject to an outside limit, and a public hospital requires a written notice of claim within ninety days.
Getting the date wrong ends a strong case permanently, so have it confirmed rather than estimated.
No lawyer can promise a number, but a claim can pursue:
New York does not cap damages in medical malpractice cases, so what a claim is worth is decided by the proof rather than by a ceiling.
A family can bring a claim for the losses they carry after the death, which New York measures in financial terms, along with a separate claim belonging to the person who died for what they experienced beforehand. In a case where someone deteriorated over hours while help did not come, that second claim can be substantial. Someone has to be appointed to represent the estate first, and the deadlines differ from a survivor's case. Our wrongful death page explains how those cases work.
No. Our surgical error lawyers handle these cases on a contingency fee basis, which means there is no fee unless there is a recovery. The first consultation is free and carries no obligation, and having the records reviewed costs you nothing.
Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower carries the case so you can concentrate on recovering. Our surgical error lawyers:
Our surgical error lawyers prepare every case as if a jury will hear it, because carriers in this field pay attention to files that are ready for one. A settlement on the right number is welcome. A settlement that shortchanges what the error cost you is not one this firm accepts just because it comes early.
If something went wrong during your surgery or in the days after it, the records that explain what happened exist right now. The consultation is free, and Korman Lynch Lustig & Sassower does not get paid unless you do.
Call us at (212) 732-4992 24/7 to arrange to speak with a personal injury lawyer about your case, or contact us through our website today.
Attorney Advertising | Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. The information on this website is for general information purposes only. Nothing on this site should be taken as legal advice for any individual case or situation. This information is not intended to create, and receipt or viewing does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
