Texas hospitals are experiencing a troubling number of ‘extreme surgical errors,’ but damages paid out to patients are capped by state law, a bombshell report revealed.
The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) has a category of extreme surgical errors called serious reportable events, also known as ‘never events.’
‘Never events’ fall into four categories: wrong procedure, wrong patient, wrong site and unintentionally retained object.
In 2024, DSHS reported 128 cases of retained objects, 73 wrong site, 26 wrong procedure and 11 wrong patient, according to an analysis by The Dallas Morning News.
A year before, in 2023, there were 130 retained object cases, 50 wrong site, 20 wrong procedure and six wrong patient.
While the numbers are alarming, state law caps the amount of non-economic damages hospitals must pay in medical malpractice lawsuits, such as pain and suffering, while there is no limit on medical bills or lost wages.
State-owned hospitals may be protected by caps that can limit recovery to as little as $100,000 per person in some cases, while private healthcare providers are generally subject to a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages.
One woman who spoke to the newspaper, Morgan Jackson, said she was accidentally sterilized by her doctor after giving birth.
Texas hospitals have been rocked by a wave of ‘extreme surgical errors,’ yet victims face strict state-imposed limits on the damages they can recover, a bombshell report revealed
One woman who spoke to the newspaper, Morgan Jackson, said she was accidentally sterilized by her doctor after giving birth
In July 2023, Jackson said she went to a Houston hospital for a scheduled C-section, and her doctor was supposed to remove a cyst on her left ovary.
However, after the doctor removed the cyst and her left ovary and left fallopian tube, they continued with a full sterilization.
Her doctor later testified that he could not find Jackson’s chart before surgery and read an inaccurate summary of the procedure before going in, according to the newspaper.
‘If this had not happened to us at all, we could have had at least one more baby,’ Jackson said. ‘That choice was taken away from me.’
Janie Ayala discovered she had two lumps in her right breast; one was benign, and the other was cancerous, according to The Dallas Morning News.
She went in for a lumpectomy to remove the cancerous lump in her right breast in July 2017.
However, about five months later, in mid-December 2017, she had another mammogram, and doctors found that the cancerous lump had not been removed, but the benign one had.
One woman learned the wrong tumor had been removed during her surgery, and another discovered a needle had been left inside her after a C-section
Her doctors then found that the cancer had spread and she now required a mastectomy. She also had to go through four cycles of chemotherapy to treat the cancer.
‘I thought I was going to lose my mom,’ Ayala’s youngest daughter, Beatrice ‘Bebee’ Gary, told the newspaper.
‘She went through hell and came back, and then went through hell again and came back.’
She eventually settled a lawsuit with the hospital and is subject to a confidentiality agreement.
Beatriz Cerda gave birth to her daughter via C-section in 2022 and thought nothing of it for years, she told the outlet.
Then, in September 2025, she thought she had appendicitis and went to the hospital.
A CT scan ruled out appendicitis, but doctors discovered a curved metal object about three centimeters long in her abdomen.
When she had surgery to remove it, after making their first incision, doctors discovered the needle had moved, Cerda said.
After additionally bringing in an X-ray machine to find it and making another incision, doctors found the needle fully encased in its original packaging.
‘But to me, I’m like, “How do you lose that?”‘ Cerda said. ‘I could possibly understand losing a single needle, but a whole plastic-packaged needle is insane to me.’
She reached a settlement with the hospital that left the needle in, but because she had removed it at a different hospital, she was forced to pay $7,000 in medical bills.
‘When something like this happens, it’s really shocking,’ she said. ‘And so, to me, I just feel like there needs to be more protection for patients.’
The Daily Mail has reached out to the Texas Department of State Health Services for comment.