Must admit I did not read everyone's post for the sake of conserving time and getting to bed before the alarm goes off.
In the US the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Hospitals (JCAHO) instituted national patient safety goals to ensure patient safety due to wrong site, wrong side kind of errors. This is the reason all of you in the US who have ANY kind of surgery that could be confused as wrong side or wrong site should be asked which side, or what site and it should be marked either by you, or a representative (meaning a family member, or physician, nurse etc. depending on the policy of the institution) and you should confirm it.
You should also be asked for two patient identifiers, such as your name and date of birth to verify who you are.
If you want to know what goes on behind the scenes to assure your safety in the US, google JCAHO and review some of the National patient safety goals. Medicine is a science, not an exact one, and where humans are involved, mistakes do happen. In the medical community, we take mistakes very seriously and do all we can to prevent them. Marking the operative site before the patient is asleep is one way to avoid surgical errors.
