DanMargarita.com

I bring this up because the other day I saw something on the news about patients feeling so skittish about going into surgery, that many of them use magic markers to write on their bodies a note telling the surgeon where to cut, and where not to cut. I guess the idea is that a magic marker would be a better safeguard than a yellow "post-it" note.

The report showed an x-ray in which a large surgical implement had been left in a patient. How any surgical team could allow this to happen strains credulity. It's not like this was a tiny implement that could easily be overlooked, but appeared to be roughly a four-inch saw. Remember that an operation isn't performed by one individual in secrecy, rather by a team consisting of a number of people including doctors, nurses and an anesthesiologist. You'd think someone would have noticed Dr. Jones dropping a saw into the patient. A quick inventory of instruments after the operation would have taken care of this problem.

"Hey, didn't we have three saws for this operation?"

Perhaps the most famous case of malpractice occurred in Florida in 1995 in which a man had the wrong foot amputated. That is, the wrong foot was amputated by mistake, not that he intentionally had them amputate the wrong foot.

One can't imagine the horror of this poor guy who after waking up the procedure only to find they've taken the wrong foot. As if that wasn't bad enough, they still had to go back and amputate the foot that they were supposed to. Talk about having a bad week.

I don't know what happened after that, but I'm sure there was a lawsuit involved, although some legal experts said the plaintiff wouldn't win because he didn't have a leg to stand on. (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I just couldn't resist that one.)

The doctor involved in the case also had another instance where he amputated the wrong foot. Dyslexia for an accountant may be a nuisance, but for a surgeon it can be tragic. You'd think that this particular surgeon might make a more concerted effort amputate the correct foot, instead of walking into the operating room and reading the note on the clipboard that says "Amputate right foot" and asking, "Does that mean my right or his right?"

This is why nervous patients have taken to marking surgical locations on their bodies, because we all get vexed with the right/left thing. Everybody has told someone at some point,

"You've got something on the side of your mouth. No, no, the other side."

The operating room is not the place for an Abbott and Costello routine.

"I'm supposed to amputate the left foot, right?"

"Right."

"You mean I'm supposed to amputate the right foot?"

"No, the left."

"You said 'right'?"

"I meant that's correct!"

I'm sure the facilities involved will go to great lengths to correct these problems.

Yeah, right.