post by Sam C.
Cardiothoracic surgery is a potentially life threatening operation, so therefore the patient must feel confident that the surgeons are adequately trained and that they will perform the surgery in the safest and most successful way.
Since cardiothoracic surgery can involve open heart and open lung operations, they clearly come with a risk of quite damaging effects; the most obvious and immediate being a fatality for the patient, but also longer term discomfort or further damage to the vital organs, which could leave the patient in a lot of pain, or so physically disabled that they are no longer able to work. Without compensation, these unfortunate patients would find their regular lifestyle very difficult to maintain.
Having said this, these problems caused after surgery may not be due to the failure of the surgeon to successfully operate on the patient. Cardiothoracic surgery is the surgical treatment of diseases affecting vital organs. Though this does mean operating on organs such as the heart and lungs, it may not necessarily be the surgeons fault if the operation does not completely eradicate all discomfort of the patient. For example, it may be that the disease has already caused too much of an adverse effect on an organ that it is simply untreatable. Though the patient may feel let down by the efforts of the doctors, it may not be their fault if there is no way of treating the disease, in fact they will have done everything in their power to limit the effects and stop the spreading.
However, sometimes the surgeon is at fault and under these circumstances a cardiothoracic surgery expert witness is required to successfully acquire the compensation that the patient deserves. Such an expert will know all the precautions and procedures that the surgeons should have taken before and during surgery, and they can determine whether the injury was preventable, and whether a claim should be made or not.
It is important that the patient is aware of the situation before making a claim for compensation, so the cardiothoracic surgery expert witness is there to determine whether the injury was caused due to negligence of the surgeon and whether there is a case to be won. The expert is needed to provide substantial evidence for the courts to decide that there is a case in favour of compensation, and for this reason they are very important in aiding the future of those suffering from injuries that were not their own fault.
Cardiothoracic Surgery and Court Cases
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