You just got a letter that says a complication after surgery may have resulted from a preventable mistake. A surgical error is a mistake made before, during, or immediately after an operation that falls below the accepted medical standard of care and causes harm. It can include operating on the wrong body part, damaging an organ or nerve unnecessarily, leaving a sponge or instrument inside the body, giving the wrong procedure, or failing to respond to dangerous bleeding or infection. Not every bad surgical outcome is an error; the key question is whether a reasonably careful surgeon, hospital, or operating team would have acted differently under the same circumstances.

This matters because a surgical error may support a medical malpractice claim against a surgeon, hospital, anesthesiologist, or other provider. Proof usually requires medical records, operative reports, imaging, and an expert opinion showing both a departure from accepted practice and causation - that the mistake caused the injury rather than the underlying illness.

In New York, most medical malpractice claims must be filed within 2 years and 6 months under CPLR 214-a. A special rule applies when a foreign object is left in the body: the claim may be started within 1 year from the date the object was discovered, or reasonably should have been discovered. New York's Lavern's Law, enacted in 2018, mainly changed timing for certain cancer misdiagnosis cases, not ordinary surgical error claims.