Cut or Perforated Bowels During Laparoscopic and Da Vinci Robot Surgeries | Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp

On a support board for women who have endometriosis I ran across this statement “No, I am not lazy, I am in PAIN. No, I am not addicted to pain meds, there aren’t enough in the world to take away my PAIN. AND, NO it is NOT all in MY HEAD!”  This sums up the frustration of women who have this painful disease and have yet to be diagnosed or their conditions are not managed correctly by their doctors.

 

A common procedure to help alleviate this terrible pain is a hysterectomy.  The hysterectomy can be performed in a number of ways including laparoscopically through the use of an incision (laparotomy) through the vagina, and a combination of laparoscopy and vaginal access (vaginally assisted hysterectomy).  
 

Click below for more information on medical malpractice injuries that may occur during a hysterectomy procedure:

 

Many times these women are so desperate to end the pain that is plaguing their lives that they don’t ask enough questions and end up in the hands of a doctor who is inexperienced.  Any doctor can nick or cut your colon or bowels and not even know it. If your doctor cuts or nicks the bowels, but recognizes the mistake while you are still in surgery, they may avoid what is considered medical malpractice. However when these type of medical and surgical errors occur if the surgeon does not realize he has nicked the bowels and immediately fix the problem then the victim faces serious complications such as death, extreme pain and may have a viable medical malpractice case.

 

There is a danger associated with hysterectomies because the uterus and associated anatomic structures, like ovaries, are very close to various portions of a patient’s bowel and/or colon.  Surgeries using the da vinci robot have also ended in perforated bowels because of lack of training for doctors and the inability for doctors to see what they are doing.

 

Our Virginia Beach personal injury firm has handled many perforated and nicked bowel cases and we are sensitive to the pain that our clients suffer.  One of our recent clients suffered severe infection and required multiple abdominal “washouts” over the course of several weeks to try and repair the damage. Even after these procedures, our client required two additional surgeries to try and correct the damage from the initial hysterectomy.

 

CT