Investigation Complaints from Neurosurgeons Referred to the Office of the Forensic Medicine Committees of Tehra

One of the most important professional problems for doctors is the dissatisfaction and complaints of patients to the jurisdictions and the consequences in their personal and professional life. These medical errors may occur in different parts of the health care system. This study aimed to investigate failure cases of neurological surgeons referred to the Department of Forensic Medicine Commission in Tehran during a five-year period 2010-2014.
In this descriptive cross-sectional study, all cases which referred to Forensic Medicine Commission for five years ended in 2014, were evaluated for demographic and specific variables.
Findings: The total number of complaints from medical failure from the beginning of 2010 to the end of 2014 is 11370, of which 340 cases (3%) were related to the failure of the medical specialty of neurosurgery. The range of ages was between 1 and 92 years old. Complainant consists of 217 males and 123 females. Neurosurgeons consist of 338 males and 2 females in this 5 year period. The most frequent cause of complaints was the death of the patient after surgery. 127 therapeutic interventions in University centers, 62 therapeutic interventions in governmental non-university centers and 151 therapeutic interventions in private centers were done. Out of 340 complaints cases of neurological surgeons, 255 cases (75%) of nerve surgeons were acquitted and 85 (25%) were condemned.
The total number of complaints from neurological surgeons during the years 2010-2014 is increasing. There is a correlation between the frequency of failures of neurogenic surgeons with the sex of the nerve surgeon, and male surgeons have more committed failure than female surgeons, which can be attributed to the presence of a significant number of male neurological surgeons for female in this field as well referring more patients to male neurosurgeons in the country.