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Gallbladder Surgery Medical Injuries | Removal Surgery Involves A Very Real Risk

Injuries Due to Errors During Gallbladder Surgery

Chances are you, or someone you know, have had their gallbladder surgically removed. This operation is called a cholecystectomy. Gallbladder disease affects 12% of adults, and each year more than 700,000 Americans have their gallbladders removed. This operation involves a surgical procedure that has become commonplace in the United States. Despite its popularity, the procedure presents significant risks, such as injury to nearby organs and structures, which could require additional surgery, inflate medical bills, and/or cause serious and permanent injuries.
The gallbladder is an organ located beneath the liver which collects and stores bile. The most common issue that gives rise to gallbladder removal surgery is the presence of gallstones inside of the gallbladder or bile duct. These “stones” are formed by a combination of cholesterol and bile salts. Gallstones can block bile flow, causing the gallbladder to swell, and resulting in sharp abdominal pain, vomiting, indigestion, and fever. If the gallstones are blocking the bile duct, the skin around the area can turn a shade of yellow.

In recent decades, with the introduction of the laparoscopic cholecystectomy (as opposed to an “open” surgical procedure, which requires a large incision, with a resulting scar), there has been an increase in “closed” gallbladder surgeries. The laparoscopic procedure involves four small incisions into the abdomen, allowing the surgeon to remove the gallbladder by using a fiber-optic camera to visualize the gallbladder and the structures that surround it. About 90% of cholecystectomies are laparoscopic. Since the incisions are much smaller than a traditional cholecystectomy, recovery time is much shorter, and postoperative pain is significantly decreased.

Like many surgical procedures, even those as popular as this one, gallbladder removal surgery involves a very real risk of complications including, but not limited to: bleeding; pneumonia; infection; blood clots; heart problems; bile leakage; and unintended injuries to nearby organs and structures, commonly the bile duct or small intestine. Despite laparoscopic cholecystectomies being the favored procedure, open cholecystectomies pose significantly less risk of injury to the bile duct.

You should contact your doctor if any of the following symptoms occur after gallbladder surgery:

  • You have a persistent fever, nausea, or vomiting;
  • Your pain is not relieved by the medications provided by your physician;
  • You have a persistent cough or shortness of breath;
  • You are experiencing drainage of pus from your incision(s);
  • You have increased redness around your incision(s); or
  • You have not been able to eat or drink.

The most common medical error reported during laparoscopic cholecystectomy is the cutting of either the common bile duct or the common hepatic duct. Because the procedure is performed using a fiber-optic camera, which projects a two dimensional image (not three dimensional) onto a monitor for the surgeon to see and use to guide his instruments, surgeons sometimes mis-identify the common bile or hepatic duct for the cystic duct. Also, the surgeon is deprived of using the sense of touch to identify the various structures during a laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The cystic duct needs to be cut in order for the gallbladder to be removed. However, the common bile duct is supposed to remain intact, and an injury to that structure could mean additional surgeries, increased risk of secondary biliary cirrhosis, and liver failure.

Surgeons may limit the risk of injury to the bile duct by performing a cholangiogram before, or during, the procedure. A cholangiogram allows the surgeon to see the structures and gallstones by inserting dye into the common bile duct, thereby reducing the risk of misidentification. Surgeons may also elect to perform an open cholecystectomy, which allows them to see each structure, and avoid the risk of injuring a nearby organ, duct, or vessel. A surgeon who fails to consider and/or undertake either option, and then injures a structure during the surgery, may be held legally responsible for a patient’s injuries.

Injury to a nearby structure or organ during gallbladder surgery may have resulted from a preventable medical error. An experienced malpractice attorney can assist the injured patient, and his/her loved ones, in obtaining compensation to offset the unexpected and unwanted costs of medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and psychological issues associated with this medical injury. Surgeons, and other medical professionals, must act in a manner that meets the accepted standards of medical care. If a surgeon deviated from these standards, a medical malpractice attorney can hold that healthcare provider legally responsible.

Compensation for Birth Injuries Under Pennsylvania Law: What You’re Entitled To

For all parents, the birth of a child is cause for celebration. While no one expects childbirth to be particularly easy, parents do not anticipate complications during labor or injuries during childbirth. When newborn infants spend the precious first moments of their lives being resuscitated, followed by days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of a hospital, the happy parents’ celebratory occasion turns into cause for concern, and the unanswered questions overshadow conversations with the medical professionals who must answer questions that parents hoped they would never have to ask.

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), an anti-medical malpractice lobby, would have you believe that your newborn’s birth injury is not the result of prenatal asphyxia, but a medical malpractice attorney who knows how to investigate birth injuries, can help you to determine whether the acts or omissions of the physicians, nursing staff, and hospital fell below the standard of care causing serious and permanent complications to the baby and/or the mother.

If complications arose during your pregnancy or labor, and your child suffers from neurological and cognitive deficits, and/or motor skills impairments, your child’s injuries could be a result of medical malpractice. It is important for parents to contact a birth injury lawyer as soon as possible to discuss available legal options, and to begin a thorough factual investigation.

Birth Injuries:

Erb’s Palsy
A common birth injury is Erb’s Palsy– a nerve injury to the baby’s arms resulting from excessive pulling or stretching during delivery. The injury winds up disabling the child’s motor functions in the stretched arm or hand, which severely restricts the child’s functioning later in life.

Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy
Another common birth injury caused by physician malpractice is hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, caused by deprivation of oxygen to the newborn. This often results in Cerebral Palsy. Paul Lauricella and Slade McLaughlin recently won a $55 million birth injury verdict for a child who was born with hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, against an obstetrician/gynecologist who elected not to perform an emergency cesarean section to deliver a baby, despite ominous signs of fetal distress during a prolonged labor and delivery.

Injuries to Mother:

Loss of Child Bearing Capacity
Mothers who deliver via C-Section are vulnerable to a host of surgical complications. For that reason, physicians tend to avoid caesarean section deliveries, but caesarean delivery may be necessary in some cases. Although it may not be malpractice for a physician to cut the uterus during delivery, it may fall below the standard of care if the physician fails to locate that cut and stop the blood loss.

If you, or a loved one, suffered unnecessarily during your pregnancy or childbirth, you should speak with a birth injury lawyer in our Philadelphia office.

What Can Be Recovered

Pennsylvania law allows the parents, or child, who suffered from a birth-related injury to receive compensation for medical malpractice.

A child who suffered a birth-related injury may be entitled to damages for:

  • Current and future medical expenses;
  • Loss of lifetime earning capacity;
  • Pain and suffering;
  • Loss of life’s pleasures; and
  • Humiliation, embarrassment, and disfigurement

These figures can be difficult to calculate, but a skilled medical malpractice attorney will consult with the appropriate vocational, economic, and life care planning experts to determine the proper amount of damages that are due.

A mother who suffered an injury during childbirth may be entitled to damages for:

  • Current and future medical expenses;
  • Loss of wages;
  • Pain and suffering;
  • Physical, emotional, and psychological injuries; and
  • Loss of life’s pleasures.

A skilled attorney will ensure that parents and the injured child receive the compensation that they are entitled to receive. Only a thorough factual and legal investigation conducted by a skilled attorney who consults with the right experts, and has experience handling birth injury cases, is capable of securing just compensation for his/her clients.

Slade McLaughlin and Paul Lauricella are among the best birth injury attorneys in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Speak with an attorney at McLaughlin & Lauricella’s Philadelphia or New Jersey office about your birth-injury case today.

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Altered States (of medical records)


Most people would be shocked to learn the frequency with which doctors and other health care professionals revise, rewrite, or purge records following the occurrence of an adverse event that is likely to result in a medical malpractice lawsuit.  Pennsylvania law specifically provides that record alteration constitutes “unprofessional conduct.”












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Paul Lauricella

McLaughlin & Lauricella, P.A.