Surgery mix-ups surprisingly common

October 19, 2010

Unthinkable errors by doctors and surgeons — such as amputating the wrong leg or removing organs from the wrong patient — occur more frequently than previously believed, a new study suggests. Over a period of 6.5 years, doctors in Colorado alone operated on the wrong patient at least 25 times and on the wrong part of the body in another 107 patients, according to the study, which appears in the Archives of Surgery. (CNN)