Litigation Resulting from Anesthesia in Oral Surgery
A very interesting article titled “Medical Malpractice Litigation Associated With Anesthesia in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery,” by Ji et al. appears in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (vol. 76, pp. 1606-1610, 2018). The article attempts to explore malpractice in oral and maxillofacial surgery where anesthesia is involved that does not purely rely on media reports. In the study the authors used the Thomson Reuters Westlaw Next Database, to identify medical malpractice cases filed from 1985 through 2017. The cases included must have involved an oral and maxillofacial surgeon as a defendant. Furthermore, complications had to be attributable to local, intravenous, or general anesthesia delivered and the cases had to have progressed to trial by jury in a state or federal court. The authors identified an initial list of 112 cases but reduced the sample down to just 13 … Read more