The medicolegal impact of misplaced pedicle and lateral mass screws on spine surgery in the United States.

Abstract:

:Spine surgery has been disproportionately impacted by medical liability and malpractice litigation, with the majority of claims and payouts related to procedural error. One common area for the potential avoidance of malpractice claims and subsequent payouts involves misplaced pedicle and/or lateral mass instrumentation. However, the medicolegal impact of misplaced screws on spine surgery has not been directly reported in the literature. The authors of the current study aimed to describe this impact in the United States, as well as to suggest a potential method for mitigating the problem.This retrospective analysis of 68 closed medicolegal cases related to misplaced screws in spine surgery showed that neurosurgeons and orthopedic spine surgeons were equally named as the defendant (n = 32 and 31, respectively), and cases were most commonly due to misplaced lumbar pedicle screws (n = 41, 60.3%). Litigation resulted in average payouts of $1,204,422 ± $753,832 between 1995 and 2019, when adjusted for inflation. The median time to case closure was 56.3 (35.2-67.2) months when ruled in favor of the plaintiff (i.e., patient) compared to 61.5 (51.4-77.2) months for defendant (surgeon) verdicts (p = 0.117).

journal_name

Neurosurg Focus

journal_title

Neurosurgical focus

authors

Sankey EW,Mehta VA,Wang TY,Than TT,Goodwin CR,Karikari IO,Shaffrey CI,Abd-El-Barr MM,Than KD

doi

10.3171/2020.8.FOCUS20600

subject

Has Abstract

pub_date

2020-11-01 00:00:00

pages

E20

issue

5

issn

1092-0684

pii

2020.8.FOCUS20600

journal_volume

49

pub_type

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