Medico-legal claims in bariatric surgery in France between 2010 and 2015.

J Visc Surg

Clinique Turin, 7/11 rue de Turin, 75008 Paris, France. Electronic address:

Published: September 2019

Purpose Of The Study: The practice of bariatric surgery has multiplied 3.5 times in France in the last ten years. The purpose of the study is to analyze medico-legal claims in this area in order to identify lessons to improve patient care.

Patients And Methods: Two visceral surgeons analyzed 358 independent claim files. Age, gender, socio-economic origin, body mass index, surgical history, depression, smoking, anticoagulants, and pre-operative assessment of patients were recorded. The operative indication, the type and date of occurrence of the event, the existence and causes of intra-operative incidents, re-interventions, inter-hospital transfers and deaths were noted. Any anomaly of care, whether noted by the expert or the court, was considered a fault.

Results: The types of bariatric procedures included sleeve gastrectomy in 52.1% of cases and gastric bypass in 33.2% of cases. A third of patients (31.2%) had a history of previous abdominal surgery. The main complications were anastomotic leak (48.6%), followed by vomiting, wounds of neighboring organs, and infections. Fault was found in 30.4% of cases: for delay of care (36.8%), surgical clumsiness or ineptitude (15.5%), incorrect indications, lack of patient information. In 6.4% of cases, metabolic deficiencies with encephalopathy developed.

Conclusion: The indications of the French High Authority of Health [Haute autorité de santé (HAS)] must be respected and intra-operative difficulties should not be underestimated in patients who have undergone previous surgery. Post-operatively, clinical signs of severity take precedence over complementary examinations, even when negative. Close monitoring is necessary to quickly detect complications that occur outside the facility, whether it is a surgical complication or vitamin deficiency.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jviscsurg.2019.04.004DOI Listing

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