Investigative journalists at the Irish Independent have revealed there has been at least 19 wrong body part errrors by surgeons in Health Service Executive (HSE) hospitals between 2005 and 2010. Wrong body part surgical errors, sometimes called wrong-site surgeries, occur when a surgeon operates on the wrong part of a patient. The surgical errors in the HSE hospitals included operations on the wrong eye, ovary, kidney, leg, hand, and finger.
The HSE has already paid six hospital negligence claims as a result of the wrong body part operations, including a case where a surgeon in Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin removed the wrong kidney of a boy in March 2008, leaving him requiring dialysis until he gets a kidney transplant.
Ireland has operated a centralised database since 2000 to which all adverse clinical incidents must be reported. The data on wrong body part errors came from this database. The system means that while patients may not be fully informed and aware that they suffered some sort of clinical incident while receiving treatment in an Irish hospital, the error will be reported and logged in the centralised database.