Knee Replacement Gone Bad; New York Medical Malpractice Attorney Explains

Welcome and thank you for joining me. I’m Gerry Oginski, a New York medical malpractice and personal injury trial lawyer practicing law here in the state of New York. Today’s video topic explores what happens when an orthopedist misplaced and improperly placed hardware that was supposed to go into a woman’s knee. What happened was a woman was undergoing a unicompartmental knee surgery – that’s a surgery where one of the compartments is going to be replaced with artificial hardware. The doctor put the hardware in correctly, but he didn’t position it correctly. Now how could he have corrected it? He could have corrected it because during the surgery they will often take what’s known as “intraoperative x-rays” and an intraoperative x-ray is exactly what it sounds like. You take an x-ray during the actual surgery, but before you wake the patient up. And why do you do that? You do that to make sure that the placement of the hardware is correct because if you don’t put it in correctly then when the patient wakes up and starts to use that hardware and use that leg, it’s already too late because now it’s not positioned correctly. The patient has problems and pain, and now you have to wonder do we have to go back in and do another surgery. Well, unfortunately, for my client that’s exactly what happened. The doctor failed to take an intraoperative x-ray which would have clearly showed that the positioning was incorrect. Had he done that, all he would have had to do was reposition the hardware and then everything would have been fine. So the failure to take an x-ray during the course of surgery was a departure from good and accepted medical practice. During the lawsuit, I had a chance to question this orthopedist. And I asked him why he didn’t take an x-ray during the course of surgery. He told me he didn’t need to and anyway he took one after the surgery was completed, while the patient was in the recovery room. I said, “But even if you take it in the recovery room, it’s already too late because if you recognize then that the positioning is incorrect you will still have to return the patient to the operating room at a different date.” And he agreed with that fact but still would not accept the fact that it was a departure not to take that x-ray. So the bottom line was this woman had an extra surgery and had four months of pain and suffering dealing with hardware that didn’t fit properly into her knee, all because this particular orthopedist chose not to have this done during the course of surgery. And that’s it for today’s video tip about orthopedics. I want to thank you for joining me. I’m Gerry Oginski, have a great day!