Surgery accident kills woman.

[RICHARD]

http://news.aol.com/article/woman-di...uring%2F675219

Here's another little story that will send chills up your spine and make you a little more paranoid?


I took fire/safety classes that were more geared towards the tech and nurse people in the operating rooms. These kinds of fires are more common that we hear about.

Most of the time the patient never hears about them because they are small and limited to the drapes (both cotton and fire proof) covering the patient.

Docs and techs will place a 'cool' cautery tip - an instrument like a soldering iron- down on a piece of fabric and that is enough to start the whole ball of wax ablaze. The cautery tip is used to 'burn' closed a bleeding part of a surgical site and is operated with a foot pedal, like a sewing machine. a misstep can heat that tip up and WHOOSH!

Even tho the surgical drapes are non-flammable, a more proper description, there are plenty of other sources for a fire to start.



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Many hospitals have 'incident reporting' forms that are internal and never show up in a medical record. The are filled out by the staff and go to a Quality Assurance/Best Practices office, where they are looked at and reviewed and lead to changes in procedures during a patient's care and treatment.

They then get buried in a file cabinet somewhere in the bowels of the building.

[Daisy and Delilah]

Thanks for posting this, Richard. I heard the end of the report on tv today. I can't begin to express how scary this is. I am speechless.

[pomtzu]

Pretty darned scary. Every time I've ever had surgery, I've had it in the back of my mind, that there's a possibility that I would never wake up from it. Of course, you always think of a problem with the anesthesia, or maybe cardiac arrest or stroke, or uncontrolled bleeding. Can't say I ever gave a thought to burning to death tho. Yikes!

[lizbud]

How horrible. She didn't even die until six days later. That poor woman.