Great Discussion of Surgical Towel and Retained Lap Sponge Cases Posted on Norfolk Portsmouth Injury Board Site | Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp

            A very good discussion about the deadlines for bringing a medical malpractice claim/lawsuit where the surgeon and hospital has left surgical supplies (such as a sponge, piece of a tool, or a small surgical towel) inside a patient’s body after an operation, has been posted by a lawyer at our firm.  In reading this article you may recognize a situation that has happened to someone in your family causing them to have had to undergo a second surgery, often with a nasty surgical scar, that was not necessary except for a medical error or mistake which should not have happened in the hospital operating room (OR) during surgery.  Best surgery practices in hospitals and operating rooms should prevent this medical mistake from ever happening.  Hopefully, the main Hampton Roads hospitals of the Sentara and Bon Secour systems manage to prevent this needless surgical complication, resulting from the doctor or nursing error and in failing to check and count the surgery supplies at the end of surgery.   As an experienced medical malpractice attorney working on these cases for nearly three decades, I have seen this and other avoidable errors harm people in Virginia (VA), North Carolina (NC) and elsewhere in our country.