Originally published at: Man sues hospital for misplacing piece of his skull - Boing Boing
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Via Allan Rose Hill…
Just, FYI… Emory is the healthcare system that I’m in… generally speaking, I’ve had not problems with almost any care I’ve received over the years with them.
That said, this is awful and they should make this right.
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12-by-15 centimeter piece
That’s a honking great chuck of skull to lose; that’s almost 5" x 6" in freedom units.
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I mean, I get it. Bone flaps, Boba Fetts, at some point you get so many you have trouble remembering what all goes to what.
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Did they check the refrigerator? Thats somehow where everything I lose winds up.
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Surely only one was the right fit for his skull?
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That’s not a flap, that’s pretty much most of your skull. They must’ve meant mm
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Maybe they just cut the same standard size opening for most surgeries like those hole-cutting bits used for installing doorknobs.
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That was my initial assumption too, (admittedly, a bit of a stereotypical reaction - those 'merkins can’t metric) but both the original article and the filed complaint do actually state 12×15 cm!
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I’m glad the bone pieces I have lost over the years have all been from long dead people
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In general, the OEM parts are superior to one size fits all after-market doohickeys.
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Having heard this story reported elsewhere, I’m glad to hear that at the very least they didn’t actually lose his chunk of skull…
Isn’t Emory University Hospital Midtown the old Grady Hospital? It’s been quite awhile since I lived in Atlanta, but at the time its reputation was that you should never go there unless you were on the verge of death. The small handful of people I knew who went to Grady left untreated with one exception, whose treatment was longer and more painful than it should have been (according to the doctor who treated her) because she sat in the waiting room so long before being seen.
That said, my one visit to an Emory hospital – the main one on the university campus in Decatur – was excellent! That’s where I learned I have a horseshoe kidney, and also where I learned what a horseshoe kidney is.
No…? It used to be Crawford Long…
That “knowledge” about grady is pretty out of date, too. It’s an excellent trauma center these days and is well-regarded for being a public hospital that is a last line of defense for the working poor. Grady is generally speaking well loved these days and well respected.
I don’t think this one incident should taint all of Emory either…
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Surely not even the most venal system would consider charging the victim to repair the errors of the system? /s
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I assume that it’s not standard practice(since just labelling things usually works); but when the alternative apparently ended up costing $150,000 and placing the patient at greater risk; is there anything that would prevent genetic testing on the possible candidate bone flaps to look for matches?
Some sort of technical issue I’m unware of making that not actually on the relatively tractable end of genetic fingerprinting? Not actually that difficult; but presents procedural problems because it’s not the defined process for reuniting patients with their bone grafts? Suit overstates the difference in outcome between patient bone flaps and synthetics and doctors did not expect not having his to be an issue?
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I assume the issue is that this happened during an operation. They probably had to act fast and decided that an artificial skull plate was safer then accidentally grafting on someone else’s that could be rejected. No time for genetic tests
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I’m not a lawyer. But if a hospital, through systematic negligent behavior, manages to create additional unnecessary risk for a patient. That’s malpractice.
Mistakes happen. But they happen less often if you’re organized and have well establish processes in place.
But I’m biased. My Dad was a lab tech and labeled everything obsessively.
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A few years ago I was doing my surgery rotation in nursing school. I was present for a very long craniectomy on a baby. The surgery went well but we had an issue upon count. We thought we had everything but couldnt find the last raney clip used to hold the patient’s scalp back. Patient was already sutured up.
We nearly tore the OR up looking for that last clip. Surgeon said we were going to go back to the patient and reopen to find the last clip if we didn’t find it in the next 5 minutes. One of the surgery residents was besides himself (rightly so) because he thought he had counted completely and had sutured up the patient. He was nearly crying and he sat down in a chair. He then leaned back in his chair and rested his feet on the next chair or trashcan (I forget which). I saw the soles of his shoes… and the missing clip. He was very appreciative (hopefully moreso because the patient would avoid reopening rather than his career being salvaged).
I was thanked for my efforts - not for saving the patient from more surgery and possible harm, but for protecting the hospital/surgery team.
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