If you or a family member suffered a brain injury, a nerve injury, or another serious complication connected to anesthesia or sedation in Atlanta, you may be trying to learn what went wrong while the patient could not speak for themselves. Our Atlanta medical malpractice lawyer can review the anesthesia record minute by minute and explain whether the care met accepted standards. Moriarty Medical Malpractice Lawyers prepared this guide to explain how anesthesia errors occur and how they differ from the known risks of anesthesia.
What an Anesthesia Error Is
An anesthesia error is a departure from accepted practice in giving anesthesia or sedation, or in monitoring a patient who has received it, that causes harm. Anesthesia care may be provided by anesthesiologists, certified registered nurse anesthetists, or anesthesiologist assistants, often working as a team.
Errors can occur at any stage:
- Before the procedure, when the patient’s history, medications, allergies, and airway should be evaluated
- At the start of anesthesia, when medications are given and the airway is secured
- During the procedure, when breathing, oxygen levels, heart rhythm, and blood pressure must be monitored continuously
- During recovery, when the patient is waking up and may still have difficulty breathing on their own
Common Types of Anesthesia Errors
- Dosing errors. Giving too much of an anesthetic or sedative, or the wrong drug, can depress breathing and circulation. An anesthesia overdose can cause lasting harm or death.
- Airway failures. Failing to secure the airway, or not recognizing a breathing tube placed in the wrong location, can quickly lead to oxygen deprivation and brain injury.
- Monitoring failures. Not noticing or not responding to falling oxygen levels, abnormal heart rhythms, or dangerous changes in blood pressure.
- Inadequate evaluation before the procedure. Missing a condition such as sleep apnea, a drug allergy, or a medication interaction that should have changed the anesthesia plan.
- Positioning injuries. Nerve damage and pressure injuries can result when a patient is positioned improperly or not repositioned during a long procedure. Our page on positional injuries explains these claims.
- Failures during recovery. Discharging a patient from monitoring too soon, or missing signs of breathing problems after pain medication is given.
How Often Anesthesia-Related Deaths Occur
Death from anesthesia is rare, but it does occur. A national study of U.S. death certificate data identified 2,211 anesthesia-related deaths from 1999 to 2005, with a rate of 8.2 deaths per million hospital surgical discharges, according to research published in Anesthesiology. Overdose of anesthetics accounted for 46.6% of those deaths.
Negligence Compared With a Known Risk of Anesthesia
Anesthesia carries known risks even when it is given correctly. Nausea, sore throat, and temporary confusion are common after general anesthesia. Some serious reactions cannot be predicted in advance. When a known risk occurs despite careful evaluation, dosing, and monitoring, it is generally a complication rather than malpractice.
The legal question is whether the anesthesia team did what reasonably careful providers would have done. Many anesthesia claims turn on timing. The anesthesia record shows when oxygen levels began to fall, when the change was noticed, and what was done about it. A delayed response to a warning sign that the monitors displayed is a different matter from an event no one could have anticipated.
Before surgery under general, spinal, or major regional anesthesia, Georgia law requires disclosure of certain material risks. Our guide to informed consent rights explains those requirements. Sedation outside a hospital operating room, such as in an outpatient or office setting, raises many of the same monitoring questions. Our article on deep sedation risks looks at how oxygen deprivation can occur during sedation.
The Evidence in an Anesthesia Error Claim
- The pre-anesthesia evaluation and consent forms
- The anesthesia record, including medication doses and the times they were given
- Monitor data for oxygen levels, breathing, heart rhythm, and blood pressure
- Records showing who was present in the room and who was supervising
- Recovery room nursing notes and vital signs
- Records of any emergency response, transfer, or intensive care
Because anesthesia is often a team effort, the records must show which provider made each decision. Georgia allows a physician who supervised or taught nurse anesthetists or anesthesiologist assistants to address their standard of care, as our guide to the medical standard of care explains. When anesthesia problems occur alongside other operating room mistakes, our guide to surgical errors may also apply.
What You Can Do After an Anesthesia Injury
- Continue medical care. Follow the advice of the treating physicians about the patient’s health. This guide is not medical advice.
- Request the complete records. Ask specifically for the anesthesia record and recovery room notes, which are sometimes kept separately from the main chart.
- Write down a timeline. Note when the procedure began, when the family was told something had gone wrong, and what explanation was given.
- Speak with a lawyer early. Georgia’s filing deadlines apply, and anesthesia records are most useful when they are obtained and reviewed promptly.
Next Steps
When the records suggest an anesthesia error, our anesthesia errors practice page explains how our attorneys investigate these claims. Moriarty Medical Malpractice Lawyers represents patients and families in Atlanta and nearby communities, including Stonecrest. Contact us to schedule a free consultation and have our attorneys review the anesthesia records.
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