TY - JOUR
T1 - Medical errors in neurosurgery
AU - Rolston, John
AU - Zygourakis, Corinna
AU - Han, Seunggu
AU - Lau, Catherine
AU - Berger, Mitchel
AU - Parsa, Andrew
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Rolston JD.
PY - 2014/10/1
Y1 - 2014/10/1
N2 - Background: Medical errors cause nearly 100,000 deaths per year and cost billions of dollars annually. In order to rationally develop and institute programs to mitigate errors, the relative frequency and costs of different errors must be documented. This analysis will permit the judicious allocation of scarce healthcare resources to address the most costly errors as they are identified. Methods: Here, we provide a systematic review of the neurosurgical literature describing medical errors at the departmental level. Eligible articles were identified from the PubMed database, and restricted to reports of recognizable errors across neurosurgical practices. We limited this analysis to cross-sectional studies of errors in order to better match systems-level concerns, rather than reviewing the literature for individually selected errors like wrong-sided or wrong-level surgery. Results: Only a small number of articles met these criteria, highlighting the paucity of data on this topic. From these studies, errors were documented in anywhere from 12% to 88.7% of cases. These errors had many sources, of which only 23.7-27.8% were technical, related to the execution of the surgery itself, highlighting the importance of systems-level approaches to protecting patients and reducing errors. Conclusions: Overall, the magnitude of medical errors in neurosurgery and the lack of focused research emphasize the need for prospective categorization of morbidity with judicious attribution. Ultimately, we must raise awareness of the impact of medical errors in neurosurgery, reduce the occurrence of medical errors, and mitigate their detrimental effects.
AB - Background: Medical errors cause nearly 100,000 deaths per year and cost billions of dollars annually. In order to rationally develop and institute programs to mitigate errors, the relative frequency and costs of different errors must be documented. This analysis will permit the judicious allocation of scarce healthcare resources to address the most costly errors as they are identified. Methods: Here, we provide a systematic review of the neurosurgical literature describing medical errors at the departmental level. Eligible articles were identified from the PubMed database, and restricted to reports of recognizable errors across neurosurgical practices. We limited this analysis to cross-sectional studies of errors in order to better match systems-level concerns, rather than reviewing the literature for individually selected errors like wrong-sided or wrong-level surgery. Results: Only a small number of articles met these criteria, highlighting the paucity of data on this topic. From these studies, errors were documented in anywhere from 12% to 88.7% of cases. These errors had many sources, of which only 23.7-27.8% were technical, related to the execution of the surgery itself, highlighting the importance of systems-level approaches to protecting patients and reducing errors. Conclusions: Overall, the magnitude of medical errors in neurosurgery and the lack of focused research emphasize the need for prospective categorization of morbidity with judicious attribution. Ultimately, we must raise awareness of the impact of medical errors in neurosurgery, reduce the occurrence of medical errors, and mitigate their detrimental effects.
KW - Adverse events
KW - medical error
KW - neurological surgery
KW - quality improvement
KW - systems-based practice
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U2 - 10.4103/2152-7806.142777
DO - 10.4103/2152-7806.142777
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84908455829
SN - 2152-7806
VL - 5
SP - S435-S439
JO - Surgical Neurology International
JF - Surgical Neurology International
IS - 10Supplement
ER -