The term “black box” is commonly associated with the aviation industry; indeed, when a plane crash occurs, an expert team immediately sets out to retrieve the black box to determine the cause of the crash.
A “black box” is just a device that records and stores information about what is happening around it, so why should this tool that is crucial for airline safety be limited to the skies? What if, say, operating rooms had black boxes of their own?
That’s exactly what Dr. Teodor Grantcharov of St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto would like to know. He has been testing his own black box prototype since April to see if it can help minimize mistakes in laparoscopic surgeries.
Currently, when a surgery goes badly, doctors meet and talk about what might have happened based on any information they have, but often their information is limited. Dr. Grantcharov may be able to replace the somewhat archaic “M&Ms” (morbidity and mortality meetings) with hard data that can be assessed and used to educate and prevent future errors. His black box is about the size of a box of tissues and records everything from nurse/doctor conversations to room temperature. It also records a “gallery view” of the operating area and a feed from the surgical camera.
The black box’s use is limited to laparoscopic surgeries for now, but his research team hopes to develop boxes for urological and gynecological surgeries as well.
Unfortunately, inadvertent bowel and ureter injuries from laparoscopic surgery are not uncommon. Because the surgery is minimally invasive, the doctor’s field of view is necessarily small. When a doctor fails to realize he has cut the ureter or perforated the bowel, the patient is sewn up only to suffer painful and potentially life-threatening injuries.
Our firm has successfully settled cases for victims of botched laparoscopic surgeries, and we know how hard it can be to recover from a surgical error. While we sincerely hope that someday soon Dr. Grantcharov’s black box will be standard equipment in every operating room in the country, his box comes too late for those who have already suffered serious injuries from laparoscopic surgery mistakes. For more information on laparoscopic surgery errors, see our medical malpractice FAQs.
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Rick Shapiro has practiced personal injury law for over 30 years in Virginia, North Carolina, and throughout the Southeastern United States. He is a Board-Certified Civil Trial Advocate by the National Board of Trial Advocacy (ABA Accredited) and has litigated injury cases throughout the eastern United States, including wrongful death, trucking, faulty products, railroad, and medical negligence claims. During his three-decade career, Shapiro has won client appeals before the VA Supreme Court, VA Court of Appeals, NC Supreme Court, SC Supreme Court, WV Supreme Court, TN Supreme Court, and three times before the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, underscoring Shapiro’s trial achievements. In addition, he and his law firm have won settlements/verdicts in excess of $100 million. His success in and out of the courtroom is a big reason why he was named 2019 “Lawyer of the Year” in railroad law in U.S. News & World Report's Best Lawyers publication (Norfolk, VA area), and he has been named a “Best Lawyer” and “Super Lawyer” by those peer-reviewed organizations for multiple years. Rick was also named a “Leader in the Law, Class of 2022” by Virginia Lawyers Weekly (total of 33 statewide honorees consisting of lawyers and judges across Virginia). And in September 2023, Rick was selected as a recipient of the National Board of Trial Advocacy (NBTA) 2023 President’s Award. Although many nominations were submitted from across the country, Rick was just one of eight attorneys chosen by the prestigious National Board which certifies civil trial attorneys across the U.S. Rick was also recently named to Virginia Lawyers Weekly 2024 Virginia’s Go To Lawyers Medical Malpractice. The attorneys awarded this honor are nominated by their colleagues and chosen by a panel from the publication.
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