ABSTRACT

A significant increase in the lawsuits against physicians and other healthcare professionals with the claim of anesthesia malpractice has been observed. Retrospective studies about peri-operative deaths show that the most common causes of the de-aths are the patients’ preoperative diseases and surgical inter-vention itself. Besides this, undesirable conditions related to anesthesia practice mostly occur due to human mistakes. Stan-dardized monitoring, continuing education, improving the working conditions, feedback from the medical practice lawsu-its, standardized care guidelines on anesthesiology practice and 1 Adalet Bakanlığı Adli Tıp Kurumu, İstanbul 2 İstanbul Üniversitesi Cerrahpaşa Tıp Fakültesi, İstanbul crisis management are of critical importance for reducing the medical malpractice claims, especially those of the preventable anesthesia accidents.

Keywords: Anesthesia, medical malpractice