How experienced is your surgeon?

How experienced is your surgeon?

 

24 Jun 2024

The statistics are alarming. Medical errors are estimated to cause over 400,000 deaths each year in the United States alone. In Canada, 1 in 17 hospital stays involves a harmful event requiring treatment or prolongation of the stay.  With surgery, like every other skill, a lot of practice helps.  Surgeons who have performed over 1,000 major operations are less likely to make a technical error than less experienced surgeons who have done only ten major procedures.  It’s the same for minor surgery. More complications occur involving doctors having completed fewer procedures. As one Harvard professor remarked, “There is no such thing as minor surgery, but there are a lot of minor surgeons.”