in no particular order…
wrong site surgery
wrong site surgery isn’t simply a case of turning up at the wrong hospital for an operation - it’s the name given to surgery performed on either the wrong body part or the wrong patient and in england between april 2005 / april 2006 a total of 40 cases of wrong site surgery were settled by the nhs, the total cost coming in at £1,098,975.
(the surgeon in this pic is not incompetent. it was just a good photo)
wrong site surgery blunders that year included…
- 8 x wrong disc being removed
- 5 x incorrect leg being amputated
- 4 x incorrect hip being removed
other documented blunders in the past…
- incorrect lungs transplanted into a patient
- a woman received a hysterectomy by mistake
- a cancer sufferer had the wrong kidney removed - he is now on dialysis
- a man left hospital without his testicles after going in for a circumcision
dangerous drug trials
taking part in drug trials previous to the now infamous case at northwick park in 2006 was seen by many as an easy way to earn cash, especially amongst students.then in march 2006, a company called parexel were carrying out clinical trials of a drug called tgn1412 at the northwick park hospital on behalf of the german pharmaceutical company tegenero. the drugs, previously tested on monkeys with no side-effects, were intended to treat ‘chronic inflammatory conditions and leukaemia’ but resulted in multiple organ failure in all six of the people used in the trial.
one of the unlucky ones, nav modi, has since said that his head swelled to at least twice it’s usual size and that his girlfriend ‘was so appalled by the sight of me she couldn’t face eating for two days after her visit. i must have looked like something out of a horror movie’.
instruments left in patient
one of the most common medical slip-ups, this consists of forgetful surgeons leaving surgical instruments inside the patient’s body, sewing them up and then sending them on their way none the wiser. it apparently happens in the united states an average of 1500 times per year and recovered foreign bodies include sponges, gauze, clamps, needles and…
yep, scissors. how something that large can be missed is just ridiculous, but it happens.
the x-ray above is of 69yr old pat skinner from sydney, australia who went to hospital to have part of her colon removed due to potentially cancerous polyps growing there. for the next 18 months she was in constant pain and was even prescribed anti-depressants as a result of the 6.6 inch scissors inside her. when they were finally noticed by quick-thinking doctors it was discovered that tissue had grown around the scissors forcing the removal of her bowel.
anesthesia awareness
this one really makes me shudder.
anesthesia awareness is an awful experience caused by the improper administration of general anesthetic prior to surgery. the result varies from case to case, ranging from the patient’s ability to hear surgeons talking during the surgery through to actually feeling the indescribable pain caused by the operation. the icing on the cake is the fact that the patient is paralysed during the process meaning they are unable to alert anyone to the situation - imagine being fully aware of everything taking place at the beginning of an operation that’s set to last a few hours. holy shit.
understandably, some people who have experienced anesthesia awareness have been so traumatised that they’ve taken their own lives following the event. and the odds on this happening? it’s believed that 0.1 to 0.2 percent of all patients given general anesthetic will experience anesthesia awareness - that’s 20,000 to 40,000 people per year just in the united states.
“i did not feel cutting, but i felt tremendous pulling,” says carol weihrer, who awoke during eye-removal surgery. “it takes a lot of torque to get an eye out.” since her 45-minute ordeal in 1998, during which she felt surgical tools on her chest, listened to the music played in the surgical suite and felt like gagging because of the tube down her throat, she has become a patient advocate and set up the website anesthesiaawareness.com.
being buried alive
in 1877, the british medical journal reported a case that occured in naples. a young woman was wrongly pronounced dead by a doctor and buried, a few days later when the grave was opened in order to introduce another corpse they quickly realised that the woman had been in a coma - her clothes had been torn to shreds and she had even managed to break limbs in the struggle to escape her actual death. the doctor, after having one of his worst ever days at the office, was subsequently jailed for 3 months for involuntary manslaughter.the following story’s more of a near-miss but still pretty horrific…
1993, south africa. 24yr old sipho william mdletshe was the unfortunate victim of a road traffic accident and was pronounced dead when his body arrived at the hospital. the corpse was then routinely placed in a metal box in the mortuary and rested there for the next 2 days and nights whilst arrangements were being made for his burial. it was only when screams from the box alerted mortuary workers that he was rescued and expertly pronounced ‘undead’.
the happy ending stopped there however: his fiancee (also in the car crash) had already closed the case (mentally) and refused to see her resurrected husband-to-be, flatly refusing to believe the story and perhaps more bizarrely believing him to be a zombie who had come back to haunt her.
so, the solution to this problem? safety coffins.
there have been a number of variations created over the years, one of the most recent in 1995 by italian watchmaker fabrizio caselli. his model features ‘an emergency alarm, intercom system, a torch (flashlight), breathing apparatus, and both a heart monitor and stimulator’.
after much searching and attempting to read italian using my knowledge of the welsh language i found a website that mentions mr caselli, watches and safety coffins - whether the photos below are of the actual model he created, i have no idea. if you can read italian, take a look here and let me know.
creepy.
sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
