Medical malpractice can occur when treatment, surgery, or any other form of medical attention takes a turn for the worse due to the actions or negligence of the medical professional in charge of the patient’s care. Many medical malpractice lawyers specialize in helping their clients receive due compensation for the suffering they have endured due to a negligent medical professional.
Medical malpractice is by no means a new field of law, however. Here are some of the most famous medical malpractice cases that have occurred in the past and present.
1. Alexander Baez
Alexander Baez, who won the title of Mr. Mexico and was a runner-up for Mr. Universe, went to a plastic surgeon to receive pectoral implants and instead was given larger breast implants. It was revealed that the person who performed the surgery on Mr. Baez was not actually a certified medical professional and had forged his documents of certification.
This harrowing story also serves as a cautionary tale to always check the references of people who will be operating on you or a loved one.
2. Wrong organ removal
An 84-year-old woman who was scheduled for surgery to remove her gallbladder went into the operating room, and the surgeon mistakenly removed her right kidney. This surgeon was later placed on five years of probation after the incident.
3. Kim Tutt
When the doctors told Kim Tutt she had cancer of the jaw, they told her she had no more than six months left to live. However, they recommended surgery to remove a large part of the jaw, which she was told could extend her lifespan by three months. Kim, a mother who wanted to spend as much time as possible with her children before succumbing to cancer, agreed to undergo the surgery.
After the surgery, the doctors brought her back in and told her that her biopsy had been cross-contaminated, and it was very likely that she had never actually had cancer. Kim didn’t have to worry about fighting cancer, but she was left permanently disfigured without large parts of her chin and jaw as a result of this negligence.
4. Negligent fertility clinics
A couple was trying to conceive a child via in vitro fertilization, or IVF. The fertilization was successful, but the child the mother gave birth to had significantly darker skin than either of the two parents.
It was later discovered that the clinic had not kept track of the correct sperm belonging to the father and fertilized the mother’s egg with the sperm of another man.
5. Julie Andrews
When world-renowned actress and singer Julie Andrews developed nodes on her vocal cords in 1997, her surgeon told her that after six weeks of vocal rest following her minor removal surgery, she would be able to sing again.
In reality, the operation caused permanent damage to her voice, and she was, unfortunately, unable to continue singing. She sued on the grounds of medical malpractice.
6. Incompatible blood types
In 2003, a hospital at Duke University gave an organ donor’s heart and lungs to a 17-year-old girl who was undergoing a heart and lung transplant without stopping first to check if they blood type of the organ donor matched the girl’s blood type. The two were not the same blood type, and the girl suffered severe and fatal brain damage due to this negligence.
The doctors also attempted to cover this act of negligence up for 11 days.
7. Daryoush Mazarei
After undergoing surgery, Mazarei complained of agonizing pain in his chest. His doctors continued to dismiss it as a psychosomatic problem that could be treated with psychiatric care until he requested a CT scan and it was revealed the surgeons had left a 10-inch pair of retractors in his chest cavity.
Daryoush’s story is not as uncommon as you might expect, either: There are over 1,500 reports every year of people reporting “left objects” in their bodies after undergoing surgery.
