What are the potential pitfalls of not handling errors properly in PHP database operations?

If errors in PHP database operations are not handled properly, it can lead to security vulnerabilities, data loss, and application instability. To address this issue, it is essential to implement error handling mechanisms such as try-catch blocks to catch and handle exceptions thrown during database operations.

try {
    // Perform database operations here
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    // Handle the error gracefully
    echo "An error occurred: " . $e->getMessage();
}