[benjijay]

A friend of mine has experienced Never Event #8 (Surgery performed on the wrong body part), went in for work on a tendon in her right ankle, woke up with a cast on the left leg.

edit: scrolled further and saw that in the UK we have a different list, so I guess this would count as "Wrong site surgery"

[dhimes]

My friend is a surgeon. When he went in for knee surgery he wrote "Wrong Knee" on the good knee. He knows.

[klyrs]

I've known people who have been asked by the surgical team to mark their own surgical site. But marking off the easy mistake in addition is even better.

[wrs]

I believe it’s common in the US for the intended (and/or unintended) surgical site to be physically marked in ink before the surgery to prevent left-right mistakes.

[Smaug123]

Also in the UK. E.g. a big arrow pointing in the general direction of the site, and a dotted circle around the site itself. The low-tech ways are the best!

[dist-epoch]

I do remember reading about a case where they have marked the wrong place on the head where to drill a hole because they had the wrong patient.

[sidewndr46]

can you elaborate? What did they actually do to the left leg?

[f2aaassa]

The surgery they were going to do on the right one...

[sidewndr46]

but if the surgery is something like 'remove pin' how do they manage to perform that on the wrong leg?