Medical Litter: device debris poses serious risk

[Thorn]

This scares the daylights out of me!

"... fractured catheters, scalpels, screws, and more left behind in patients ..."

"Since 2003, reports of 72 deaths and 4,675 injuries associated with "unretrieved device fragments" have been logged into the FDA database that tracks adverse events."

more at link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25120613/

Of course, those figures are only the ones that have been reported and logged in to the database. Presumably many more have been unidentified.

Recently an acquaintance underwent laser surgery to correct his vision. They operated on the wrong eye, then tried to blame him for the confusion.

 

[uscitizen]

It is all trial lawyers and trivial lawsuits problems.
Tort reform will fix it all.

NOT!

The medical industry needs to clean up it's act some as well.

And on the secondary infections picked up while being treated....

 

[Thorn]

It is all trial lawyers and trivial lawsuits problems.
Tort reform will fix it all.

NOT!

The medical industry needs to clean up it's act some as well.

And on the secondary infections picked up while being treated....

And on misdiagnoses, poor prescription practices, etc.

A woman in our department was diagnosed with, of all things, food allergies (she was 58 and never had had such problems before). Her physician "treated" her for this for over a year. She died of kidney cancer. Another form of cancer had also taken up residence in her lung. I didn't know this at the time, but apparently the same physician declined to do a kidney biopsy because the kidney was enlarged. How scary is that!!!

More people than I care to count have been misdiagnosed in recent years with pneumonia when their actual problem was lung cancer. One friend somehow miraculously beat all odds, after being given about 3 wks. to live; eight years later she's still cancer-free. She had small-cell carcinoma, which is systemic and typically is an automatic death sentence. Nobody can understand how she overcame this but we're all very happy she did.

 

[uscitizen]

Then there is the pill pushing pharma industry. Here is what to tell your DR to buy our pills, ignore the potentially serious side effects. We can sell you more pills to treat the side effects.