Patient dies after surgeon takes lunch break during kidney operation

Saturday, September 15, 2012 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: kidney surgery, patient deaths, surgeons

(NaturalNews) A Swedish man who last year was admitted to the hospital to have a tumor removed from his kidney is now dead, not because of the tumor or the procedure, but because his anesthetist and nurse decided to take their lunch breaks right in the middle of the operation. Sweden's The Local reports that the 72-year-old man was left alone with no attending physicians while at Skaraborg Hospital in Lidkoping, during which time he was deprived of oxygen for at least eight minutes before suffering irreversible brain damage.

The shocking scenario began when the unnamed patient was given anesthesia at about 10:45 a.m. on the morning of his operation. Once 12:00 p.m. rolled around, the head anesthetist decided it was time for his lunch break, and simply left the operating room with nobody to take his place. 15 minutes later, at 12:15 p.m., the head nurse decided to do the exact same thing, leaving the patient with no one to care for him except an unqualified nurse from the orthopedic ward who did not even know how to operate the patient's respirator.

When the patient suddenly started hemorrhaging, followed by a rapid drop in his blood pressure, the orthopedic nurse tried to contact both the head anesthetist and the nurse to get help, but was unable to reach either of them. Panicked and unsure about what to do, the replacement nurse apparently shut off the patient's respirator to stop the bleeding, and left. And by the time the original nurse and anesthetist arrived back from their casual lunch, the patient had been without oxygen for at least eight minutes.

The two physicians reportedly tried to revive the man, but it was already too late. He had suffered irreparable brain damage due to lack of oxygen, and eventually died just a few weeks later. What began as a routine and common procedure for kidney cancer, in other words, ended up resulting in a patient's needless death, all because his careless attending physicians decided it was more important to eat in accordance with their own personal schedules rather than "do no harm" by ensuring that their patient received proper care in their absence.

Sweden's government-run healthcare system denies that irresponsible doctors are responsible for patient's death

Following the incident, the patient's family decided to file an incident report with Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare, which responded by saying that, in this particular case, the hospital's "operational planning" procedure led to the attending doctors "taking an unacceptable risk." In non-whitewashed language, such a statement basically implies that the decision to leave the operating room in the middle of a surgery to grab a bite to eat was absolutely unacceptable.

But the board refused to blame such negligence on the man's death, instead attributing it to the hospital's "lack of organization" and the "chaotic situation" that occurred in the operating room as a result of not having any qualified doctors present to care for a patient in the middle of his surgery. Such ridiculous political correctness; of course, illustrates just how soulless Western medicine and its centralized "healthcare" systems can be in response to their own gross negligence, or in this case, manslaughter.

A study conducted by the Swedish Association of Health Professionals found that many patients die at Swedish hospitals because of a lack of adequate hospital staff. At least five patients at Swedish hospitals have died just this summer because there were not enough qualified physicians to attend to them.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.thelocal.se/43048/20120906/

http://www.vgregion.se

http://www.thelocal.se/43124/20120910/