Originally published November 29 2010
Hospital botches operation causing healthy woman to lose both legs
by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
(NaturalNews) Going to hospital these days for even the simplest medical treatments has become a high-risk activity that could result in serious injury or death. A recent story in the New York Daily News tells of Stacey Galette, a 30-year-old woman who lost both her legs due to a surgical error. Galette says she was perfectly healthy when admitted to Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, New York, two years ago, but a day later, her life would change forever.
According to reports, Galette's surgeons punctured her intestines during a simply gynecological surgery, which triggered an infection that spread to her legs. Her blood became poisoned and her legs developed gangrene, which eventually resulted in them having to be amputated.
"It's horrifying," explained Galette's lawyer Sanford Rubenstein, to the New York Daily News. "She will be spending the rest of her life with a below-the-knees amputation, all because the doctors didn't follow accepted medical practice."
Before the surgery, Galette was healthy, married, and worked a full-time job. Today, she is in the process of a divorce, lives with her mother, and remains on disability because she is unable to work. She also permanently lost some of her hearing after being put into an induced coma for three weeks following surgery-induced cardiac arrest.
A 1995 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association explained that more than a million people are injured at hospitals every year, and roughly 280,000 die every year from these injuries (http://www.naturalnews.com/023892_hospital_h...). Bacterial "superbugs", surgical errors, poor care and improper drug and dosage administration, are just a few of the many complications that often arise at hospitals that can cost patients their lives.
Currently, there is no way to identify which hospitals have the worst error rates. So patients have no way to compare hospitals and make an informed decision about which one to choose.
Sources for this story include:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/11/...
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