Reducing Medical‐Legal Risk in Colonoscopy

Adverse events of colonoscopy are a common source of medical-legal risk in gastrointestinal medical practice. Care and documentation that reduce medical-legal risk are typically also associated with improved patient outcomes. This chapter discusses medical-legal risk of multiple adverse events in colonoscopy, including performing colonoscopy for inappropriate indications, in inappropriate settings, adverse events including perforation, bleeding, splenic injury, wrong-site surgery, and post-colonoscopy colorectal cancer.