Woman Goes for Leg Operation, Gets New Anus Instead

[Jean]

I believe mistakes are made more often than most of us realize. I read an article this morning about another surgery mistake--the patient has cancer of the kidney, and the healthy kidney was removed instead of the cancerous one.

Doctors remove wrong kidney during surgery

http://www.thatsfit.com/2008/03/20/doctors-remove-wrong-kidney-during-surgery/

 

[SeriouslySearching]

OMG! I just do not understand. I cannot wrap my mind around a surgeon that could possibly make such a mistake with all the supposed safeguards in place. Unbelievable!!

 

[trixie]

I believe mistakes are made more often than most of us realize. I read an article this morning about another surgery mistake--the patient has cancer of the kidney, and the healthy kidney was removed instead of the cancerous one.

Doctors remove wrong kidney during surgery

http://www.thatsfit.com/2008/03/20/doctors-remove-wrong-kidney-during-surgery/

....And they say it's because of phoney insurance claims that the price of medical malpractice insurance is so high! Phooey!!!!:razz:

 

[crypto6]

my dad's a medical malpractice defense lawyer...

i just sent him the story and titled the e-mail "hope you never have a case like this"

Ahh, one of the sensible ones. Medmal is so over the top it's absurd. In TN, which has no caps on "pain and suffering", the last year's requested "damages" were greater then the GDP of the state.

Give the docs a mechanism to get bad docs re-educated or removed from the system. Couple this with a mandated amount going to the true medmal victim for each type of injury, and cut out the incredible waste in the system.

This type of error is inexcusable and the surgeon and staff need several years of re-education in an academic setting or to be booted from the system. WTH were they thinking when they did this? This denigrates the efforts of all surgeons who go to whatever lengths it takes to prevent wrong patient/wrong site surgeries. This is a multi-level failure of nursing, anesthesia, and the surgeon; it boggles my mind.

BTW, guess who comes to defend the bad docs when their privileges are threatened?? The ambulance chasers, to ensure a steady stream of misery from which they can feast.

c6