Doctor Who Took Out Wrong Organ............ Fined?

That is just way too strange for a surgeon *NOT* to check before slicing. Kidneys and gall bladders don't look alike.

Hey this is a misleading title. It should be South Florida doctor who took out wrong organ fined. When I saw the article at first I thought about the British Sci-fi show.

Anyhow back to the article at hand a surgeon who takes out the wrong organ should lose their license. This ought to be common knowledge for them.

This is quite interesting. As a nurse I can see how this might occur depending on the condition and size of the gallbladder being removed. If the surgery was done using a scope instead of a open abdominal incision, one might not be able to tell, especially if the gallbladder was large and distended. It certainly is abnormal to find a kidney in that location inside the abdomen.

I had a patient once who had abdominal pain and the doctor did what we called an exploratory lap which means they go in and open the abdomen with a big surgical wound. You don't see this much any more. In any case, when the physician got into the patients abdomen as an additional finding he saw that the patient had a complete set of female reproductive organs that were non functional. He removed them (they were not the cause of the patient's problem) and then we had the debate over whether we should tell the patient or not. Very unusual finding.

We used to see patients occasionally who had an abnormality of the heart where the heart was rotated and lay in the right side of the chest instead of to the left. You don't see it much so it was interesting to everyone to listen to the heart sounds and review the EKG's of these patients because they are outside the norm of what we expect.

tdk: I understand ur points, yet, the *LOOK* of each organ is different. That is, unless there is a lot of fat around... making identification difficult. But wouldn't that be a rarity in and of itself???

At least it's not like the doctor in NJ who took out the wrong lung of a cancer patient. They took out the healthy one. The patient died 2 years later, but spent his life suffering. Then it was found out that the doctor had problems like this before. Oh, and Bonus: his license expired for a few years and the hospitals never checked until he was sued for the the lung patient.

Now taking out the wrong lung is another matter. You must know the right from the left. In hospitals now we have what is known as the "time out" procedure which is where we double check the patients name, consent and body part to be operated on. The surgeon is required to be part of the time out process to assure that the proper body part is being operated on.

When I do patient pre op teaching I advise patients to scrub the operative site for three days with Hibiclens for three days prior to surgery to help prevent infection. In addition, I urge people to mark their surgical site themselves, as a precaution.

This is appalling. But then we have heard of doctors amputating the wrong limb as well, patients now fear this so much that they take sharpie pens and write on the good arm/leg "Not This One". Unfortunately we can't do this with organs.

My question would be, wasn't an MRI or some kind of scan done? Did this doctor really have no clue the man's organs were not in typical anatomical location?