Welcome to Dr. Nelson's
Wrong Site Surgery - Herndon Commentary Page
Posted February 15, 2003 Revised November 17, 2010

Commentary & Perspective
on

"Incidence of Wrong-Site Surgery Among Hand Surgeons"
by Eric G. Meinberg, MD, and Peter J. Stern, MD

Commentary & Perspective by
James Herndon, MD*,
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA

Published in the American Journal of Orthopedic Surgery, June 2003

This article commended the paper by Drs. Meinberg and Stern and went on to summarize the work that the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) is doing to avoid wrong site surgery. In 1997, the AAOS formed a Task Force, which examined the issue and made recommendations. They found, after reviewing the insurance records of 110,000 physicians of all surgical specialties during a ten-year period (1985-1995), only 331 claims of wrong-site surgery, 225 of which involved orthopaedic surgery. While rare, wrong site surgery should not happen at all. The AAOS has instituted a program to prevent wrong site surgery. Dr. Herndon ended his article by noting the effect that the AAOS program has had on the incidence of wrong site surgery in hand surgery.

The full article is not available online, but can be read at the MGH Medical Library 925-7393.

The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the American College of Surgeons, and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations all recommend that physicians involve their patients in the marking of the surgical site. The AAOS further recommends that the patient and the physician together should discuss the procedure and the surgical site prior to surgery and, after that discussion, the surgeon is to sign the surgical site.

All of my patients are asked to write, in ink, on the area where the surgery is to be performed, the name (as best as they can remember) of the surgery, and to do this the day of surgery, prior to leaving for the hospital. I will meet you prior to the surgery, confirm the side, site, and nature of the surgery, and will place my initials next to your mark. This way, your surgery will not end up as a statistic in a future "wrong site surgery" paper! Thank you for your attention to this very important detail.

 

Would you like to search the medical library of the National Library Medicine for scientific papers on this topic? Just click on

Remember the admonition from the Patient Education Links Page: the Internet has a lot of information, much of it incorrect. I have reviewed the sites that I have linked to, and have only linked to sites when I personally know the surgeon who posted it, or am a member of the organization that posted it. However, I may not agree with all that is on that site, and it may have changed since I reviewed it. If any of the information is not consistent with what I have told you, please download the material and bring it in.