Doesn’t “wrong-site” surgery sound oh so much friendlier than “Oops, we removed the wrong breast?”
From the AJC:
A surgical team at Northside Hospital was supposed to remove one of the patient’s breasts — but performed a double mastectomy because of a mistake, state records show. At Atlanta Medical Center, a surgeon drilled into the wrong side of a patient’s head before discovering the error. At several Georgia hospitals, doctors circumcised the wrong babies, performing the procedure against their parents’ wishes in cases at Wellstar Kennestone Hospital and Cartersville Medical Center. At others, doctors mistakenly operated on the wrong hand, knee, hip, leg, hernia and other body parts.
In Georgia, wrong site surgeries apparently get reported once a month. And it’s not just a problem in the South: Pennsylvania’s even worse.
I wonder how many of these mistakes are related to sleep deprivation in doctors, don’t you?
[H/T ProPublica.]
