Our client brought a clinical negligence claim against a hospital regarding the standard of care they received from an orthopaedic surgeon.
Our client suffered from arthritis and underwent a left shoulder hemiarthroplasty (a shoulder replacement operation). The operation was abandoned midway after she had been anaesthetised and the shoulder joint had been opened. This was because not all the equipment required to perform the procedure was present.
A few days later, our client underwent the second stage of the surgery under general anaesthetic. During the surgery, she sustained a fracture to her arm which was fixed with K-wires.
The fracture was not adequately stabilised and so our client had to undergo a third operation under general anaesthetic to stabilise the fracture. During this operation, our client suffered nerve damage.
As a result of undergoing so many operations, our client suffered from recurrent infections in her upper left arm. She subsequently had four operations under general anaesthetic to treat these infections.
We alleged that:
- It was a breach of duty of care to abandon the left hemiarthroplasty owing to a lack of equipment. This meant that our client needed another operation to complete the procedure. This put her at a greater risk of future infection and further bone weakness.
- It was a breach of duty of care to cause a fracture during the second stage hemiarthroplasty and to enact an inadequate repair of this. This caused the need for the fracture to be repaired and this failed which caused the need for further surgery.
- It was a breach of duty of care to cause nerve damage during the third operation. This caused permanent loss of function, infection and four abscesses requiring four operations under general anaesthetic.
Our client was successful in her surgical error compensation claim. She recovered the sum of £50,000 in compensation.
