When this happens, bile is not able to properly drain and can collect in the body. Though it is considered a rare complication, the SAGES does note that as the use of laparoscopic gallbladder procedures has grown, so has the number of common bile duct injuries.
If the surgeon recognizes the problem as it happens, he can take corrective steps or call for additional help. When the surgeon fails to see the injury or ignores the danger, the consequences for the patient can be severe. The injuries are painful and can require corrective surgery to repair. In some cases, the patient needs tubes to be placed to drain the bile from the body temporarily.
It can be difficult to know if your bile duct injury was an unfortunate complication of surgery, or if it constitutes medical malpractice. An experienced attorney can help patients obtain their records, talk to experts, and determine what legal options exist. If you or someone you love has suffered a common bile duct injury, you may be entitled to compensation. Victims can recover money for medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and more. Call New York personal injury lawyer Gerry Oginski today at to learn more about your rights under the law and schedule a free, no-obligation consultation.
The cystic duct and artery are then divided between the clips, and the gallbladder is removed. At no time during the surgery should the common bile duct be clipped or cut, as it must remain intact so that the flow of bile between the liver and small intestine can still occur.
If there is any question about the anatomy, the surgeon must visualize the entire bile duct system before cutting. Nonetheless, sometimes an inexperienced or unskilled doctor will mistakenly cut the common bile duct or hepatic duct while believing that they are cutting the cystic duct.
If errors such as these take place, extremely serious injuries or even death can occur. For example, if the bile duct is cut, a patient may leak bile into the abdominal cavity causing pain, breathing difficulties or infection.
The error of cutting the wrong duct can easily be avoided, however, by the simple use of a a cholangiogram, an x-ray of the bile ducts that can be obtained intra-operatively to correctly determine what structures should be cut. If you or a loved one has suffered a serious injury at the hands of a surgeon performing a cholecystectomy, call our legal team for a free consultation at Member Directory. List of Events. WLS Networking Call. Marketing Section Call.
Virtual Northeast Regional Meeting. Primerus Gives Back! Video: Why hire a Primerus lawyer? What happens in gallbladder surgery cases that end up as malpractice lawsuits is the doctor cuts the bile duct because they confuse it with the cystic duct.
What happens when you cut the common bile duct is bile leaks into the stomach. This can cause serious injury and death. Early on in a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, if there is any question as to where the ducts are, the surgeon can perform an intraoperative cholangiogram, which is an x-ray that gives the doctor a good clear view. The malpractice problem arises because of doctors with very different skill levels performing gallstone surgery.
Remember, this is not a rare procedure. There are not a handful of skilled specialists performing this surgery — lots of doctors do it. There is also a financial motivation that attracts surgeons to this minimally invasive procedure including a lot of gallbladder removal procedures for patients that did not have stones. When this procedure was developed in , surgeons rushed in massive numbers to learn the surgery, taking weekend courses in laparoscopic cholecystectomy by practicing on pigs and then rushing — lucratively — to patients.
There are many malpractice lawsuits that skip the surgical negligence claims and argue that the real cause of the patients injuries was unnecessary gallbladder surgery. In fact, so many patients had their gallbladders unnecessarily removed that hospitals threatened to revoke the privileges of doctors who were rushing patients to surgery in mass numbers. To this day, there are a lot of doctors performing this surgery who should not be performing the surgery because they are not qualified.
Certainly, the goal is to avoid cutting any duct but cutting or failing to secure the common bile duct causes the most medical malpractice lawsuits. When the common bile duct is compromised, there are often no immediate symptoms. But, eventually, bile may leak into the abdomen which can lead to serious complications, such as strictures, cholangitis, and pancreatitis, and other complications that, if not identified and carefully monitored, can result in death.
If the bile duct is completely cut, bile is invariably going to leak into the stomach, causing serious and sometimes fatal complications. Often, even in less severe cases, the compromised bile duct needs to be repaired, requiring another surgery, an extended hospital stay, and thousands of dollars in unnecessary medical bills. Many doctors have argued that cutting or nicking the common bile duct is an inherent risk of gallbladder surgery.
Josef E. Fischer acknowledges that many surgeons disagree with him and also acknowledges that there is a lot of recent medical literature that underscores quality ways to avoid compromising the bile duct during surgery. The National Institute of Health reports that laparoscopic gallbladder surgery injuries are more likely to occur when a surgeon has performed fewer than 25 procedures.
More recent studies have confirmed that the risk of a bile duct injury is much greater during the surgeon's learning curve, it continues to be greater than the injury rate for open cholecystectomies even after the surgeon has gained considerable experience with the procedure. This underscores the obvious: skill matters when a surgeon is removing a gallbladder.
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