Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Doofus Of The Day #81


Our Doofus today is a Swedish doctor, who clearly didn't listen during Anatomy 101.

A Swedish woman was supposed to have her appendix removed, but when the operation was completed she discovered surgeons had instead removed one of her ovaries and a Fallopian tube.

It was back in October 2007 when the woman from Ångermanland in northern Sweden suffered from the medical mishap.

The incident is now being reported by the county hospital in Sundsvall-Härnösand to the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen), as stipulated by Sweden’s Lex Maria rules governing medical accidents.

The Västernorrland County Council, which manages the hospital, said in a statement that the operation’s complexity may have contributed to the mistake.


An appendix removal, complex? Oh, come on! This has to be one of the commonest, most frequent surgeries encountered in hospitals anywhere in the world! It's been performed by military field medics in the bush, using a fighting knife! It's certainly one of the best-understood surgical procedures in existence.

Come to think of it, I had an emergency appendectomy a couple of decades ago. I'm glad it wasn't at this hospital. With my luck, since I don't have any of my own, they'd have implanted an ovary and Fallopian tubes in me, just for fun!

Peter

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