The Past Decade in Courts, What Oral-Maxillofacial Surgery Should Know About Facial Cosmetic Surgery.

[PURPOSE] The primary objective of this study was to examine medical malpractice in facial cosmetic surgery procedures to characterize factors that determine legal liability and help make the oral-maxillofacial surgeon (OMS) more comfortable with treating this patient population.

[METHODS] The Thomson Reuters Westlaw Edge is a subscription-based legal database that contains decisional law and other data from a variety of state and federal court records. The database was queried for medical malpractice cases involving facial surgical cosmetic procedures from 2010 to 2020.

[RESULTS] A total of 763 malpractice cases were identified through the search. After removing duplicates, 758 malpractice cases were hand reviewed based on inclusion/exclusion criteria. A total of 55 cases met criteria for inclusion. Verdict decisions and settlements occurred in the years of 2010 to 2019. Of those 55 cases, the highest concentration of cases occurred in New York (14), California (10) and Pennsylvania (6). Seventy-four percent of the verdicts were in favor of the defendant, 4% of cases settled and 22% of cases were decided in favor of the plaintiff. The minimum award of damages was $8,597.71 with the maximum of $4,150,000.00 (mean: $72,1915.69 ± $1,131,245.94). The provider's primary specialty was most often plastic and reconstructive surgery (84%), followed by ophthalmology (7%), dermatology (3%) and ENT (4%).

[CONCLUSION] While it is comforting to know that 74% of malpractice cases in the last decade were found in favor of the surgeon, it is important to realize how devastating the litigation experience can be for a medical practitioner. The best defense to a malpractice case is to avoid one altogether. Learning from past mistakes is one way of ensuring that goal.