Unnecessary Surgeries

Government health statistics shows that American doctors sometimes cause harm instead of good. An estimated 7.5 million unnecessary medical and surgical procedures are performed annually with the number of unnecessary hospital stays around 8.9 million a year.

Annually, between 20 million and 25 million surgeries are performed not including plastic surgery. One study determined that  almost 29% were not necessary (Health In The 21st Century by Fransisco Contreras MD, page 212). One example concluded that 27% of hysterectomies, number two in common surgeries, did not even need this procedure performed.

The number one unnecessary surgery performed deals with heart disease. "When faced with heart disease, doctors recommend a bypass. By so doing, we think, they bypass the real problem. Bypasses are the single most commonly performed unnecessary surgery in the country," write Dr. Mark Hyman and Dr. Mark Liponis in Ultraprevention. Overprescribed and unnecessary, the complications from a severe treatment such as a bypass can cause additional medical issues, such as strokes. All in all, these complications to an unnecessary surgery are common and the expense to health care is very high.

Women are at very high risk for unnecessary surgeries, with hysterectomies and caesarean sections being some of the highest over prescribed treatments that are just not needed. As of 2005, there were approximately 750,000 hysterectomies performed each year with a staggering 90% being unnecessary (according to Goldberg in Alternative Medicine). Removing a woman’s uterus is one of the most common unnecessary surgeries performed in America. The risks are very high including: moderate or light bleeding  possibly making a transfusion necessary, injury to adjacent organs, moving from vaginal to abdominal incision, hematoma (collection of blood) at the surgical site, dehiscence (wound separation), damage to the ureter, and the general risks of going under anesthesia.

The Harvard University School of Public Health estimates that as many as 1.3 million Americans suffer disabling injuries in hospitals yearly, and 198,000 of those may result in death; seven out of ten of which were preventable (48% from faulty surgery), and one third from negligence.

If you or a loved one has had the misfortune of having a surgery that may have been completely unnecessary, you feel that your physician or the hospital did not explore alternative treatments, or that you were not properly informed of all resources available pre-surgery; you may be entitled to financial compensation for the damages incurred by the performance of an unnecessary surgery There is no cost or obligation for us to evaluate your case. The Sweeney Law Firm works on a contingency fee basis. There is never a fee unless a recovery is made for you.