WRONG SIDE NEUROSURGERY

A very important problem of bioethics in surgery, in general and in neurosurgery, in particular, is wrong side surgery. This kind of mistake is more common in specialties where patients are operated immediately and in large departments with a big number of interventions. In order to address this problem, neurosurgical departments need guidelines to prevent wrong-side surgery. These guidelines should include having an open discussion between the surgical team about the case, verifying the surgical procedure to be performed, marking the surgical site in advance, adopting a series of neurosurgical checklists, using the latest technology in the field or keeping an error record. In wrong side surgery even an incision without the craniotomy represents a serious mistake and should be avoided.