O Physician, Heal Thyself !!

CAUGHT ON WRONG FOOT = something for which one is not prepared!!

  

Peruvian doctors amputate wrong leg, 

then right one

Tue Jan 26, 2010 

LIMA (Reuters) - Peruvian doctors amputated the healthy leg of an 86-year-old man, then amputated the other leg when they realized their mistake.

"I was shocked when I lifted the sheets and saw they had taken his left leg," the man's daughter, Carmen Villanueva, told Peruvian radio station RPP.

"The ulcer was on his right leg and they had to amputate that one too to keep the infection from spreading," she said.

The Alberto Sabogal Hospital in the coastal district of Callao just north of Lima said it had suspended the doctors involved in the botched surgery for a life-threatening ulcer, pending an investigation.

(Reporting by Marco Aquino; writing by Dana Ford; editing by Anthony Boadle) 

 Is this something new ?   

Read on .....

Doctor Who Cut Off Wrong Leg Is Defended by Colleagues

Published: September 17, 1995 NY Times

TAMPA, Fla., Sept. 16—  

A Tampa (Florida)  surgeon who has been widely vilified and ridiculed for mistakenly amputating the wrong leg of a patient on Feb. 20 ,1995 sought this week to regain both his license to practice medicine and a measure of his once-solid reputation.  ……………… 

They said that a series of errors by other hospital personnel and the severely diseased condition of both legs led Dr. Sanchez to believe that he was operating on the correct leg. ……….

The blackboard to which surgeons refer in the operating room at University Community Hospital in Tampa listed the wrong leg for amputation, as did the operating room schedule and the hospital computer system, testimony revealed. By the time Dr. Sanchez entered the operating room, the wrong leg had been sterilized and draped for surgery. ………….

Dr. Sanchez testified that he learned of his error from a nurse as he was still cutting through the leg of the patient, Willie King, 52. After reviewing the patient's file, she had started to shake and cry. But by that point, he said, there was no turning back. "I tried to recover from the sinking feeling I had," he testified, as his eyes grew moist and his voice trailed off. 

………..Mr. King, whose diseased leg was removed at another hospital, received a $1.2 million settlement in the case from University Community Hospital and Dr. Sanchez. 

He told reporters he did not know how Dr. Sanchez should be disciplined and said he did not hold the surgeon alone responsible for what happened to him. "There's a problem there somewhere that needs to be corrected," he said, "and I don't know what it is, and I don't know how to go about it."