# Do you know of anyone that died because of Hospital or Doctor error? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 17, 2014, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883 "2014-11-17T19:11:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Proudest\_Monkey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/proudest_monkey/32/13257_2.png) [@Proudest\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Proudest_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2014, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/41 "2014-11-18T23:25:56Z")
My step-father had a stroke and was admitted to the hospital. He was given drugs and was doing very well (sitting up, talking, lucid) for 12 hours then suddenly crashed. Spent two days on a respirator with little brain activity. The team of doctors called a family meeting during which they acknowledged that they had seriously miscalculated the dosage of the initial drug causing a blockage to enter his heart (IIRC). So instead of celebrating a full recovery, we had to decide when to remove him from life support. Mom’s lawyer talked to their lawyers and they settled for three-quarters of a million dollars. They never tried to hide the mistake–they owned it from the time they discovered it had occurred. Nor did they haggle about money. I am sad for families who have to add fighting a huge beaurocracy to the grief they suffer when losing a loved one. ---
**Author:** ![Nema98](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/d2c977/32.png) [@Nema98](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nema98)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2014, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/42 "2014-11-18T23:31:34Z")
A much much older cousin died back in the middle 1970’s shortly after giving birth. She was about 30/31, and she had been complaining about being weak, and so went to a doctor and he gave her a blood transfusion, and later that night or soon after she complained of chest pains and died. Something along those lines, and I am not medical expert. From what I heard, blood transfusions are to only be given when there is loss of blood, not just otherwise. Again I’m not sure if that was the reason, or it was an incorrect blood type. Maybe a doctor Doper here can explain. ---
**Author:** ![Nema98](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/d2c977/32.png) [@Nema98](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nema98)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2014, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/43 "2014-11-18T23:34:13Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > My grandfather died about 20 years ago in the hospital. He was having a somewhat minor procedure and was given a shot of cortisone to reduce swelling. He was allergic to cortisone, which the doctor should have known (it was in his medical records). > > My grandmother, my father, and his siblings decided not to sue the hospital because of how unpleasant they assumed such a lawsuit would be. My dad said something to the effect of “I don’t want to sit in court for a month listening to some asshole tell me how little daddy’s life was worth”. Terrible, as are others mentioned. Really is awful when it could have been preventable. ---
**Author:** ![KRC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/45deac/32.png) [@KRC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KRC)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/44 "2014-11-19T02:55:44Z")
I had a hematoma on my brain and the doctor who diagnosed it didn’t operate. Maybe that’s standard, I don’t know. For something a serious as a hemotoma I wonder. He was rather mocking, suggesting I might die when I said I wanted to go home but when a therapist took me for a walk and I tossed that walker aside and took off on my own feet, I swear, he looked disappointed. So he let me go and a month later I had an emergency operation because I didn’t know where I was, was falling over, and couldn’t talk sense. Luckily I emerged with only Musical Ear Syndrome, some memory deficits, and a sharp drop in reading comprehension. ---
**Author:** ![carnut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnut/32/3531_2.png) [@carnut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnut)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/45 "2014-11-19T03:36:08Z")
In a recent case, a young man I know who suffered from seizures was given the wrong drug to bring him out of his seizure. Instead, he went into cardiac arrest. There’s more to the story but that’s the gist of it. ---
**Author:** ![Buttercup\_Smith](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buttercup_smith/32/473_2.png) [@Buttercup\_Smith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buttercup_Smith)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/46 "2014-11-19T05:36:25Z")
Just last Thursday a 36 year old man went for a liver biopsy and died. He had a 6 month old baby and a two year old. I have to wonder if there wasn’t a mistake of some sort. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/47 "2014-11-19T08:01:59Z")
The grandmother of a friend of mine went into the hospital for knee replacement surgery. During the surgery something terrible happened and when she came out of anesthesia instead of having a new right knee she had no left leg at all. The hospital (or possibly the doctor) had a chart that they were using as evidence, in the resulting lawsuit, that her vascular system was compromised before the surgery. It was somebody else’s chart. Now, she didn’t die of the surgery. But obviously she couldn’t walk with no left leg and the same bad right knee she’d been trying to fix, and it impacted her quality of life very badly. She didn’t live to spend the money she won in the lawsuit. Another one, even worse: a man went into the emergency room with a broken wrist. During his hospital stay he got necrotizing fasciitis and died. He was a medical director at that very hospital. If it can happen to a medical director at the hospital how safe do you think YOU are? WhyNot is exactly right about the escalation of errors. If you are ever in for surgery or whatever and one little thing goes wrong right at the start, get out and do your procedure another day. I worked for a hospital in a capacity where I saw all the bad outcomes, and every single one of the really big ones started with one little thing which on its own would have been nothing. In many cases, things to fix and/or hide the initial error made it worse, and then that thing had to be fixed/hidden…and so on. ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2014, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/48 "2014-11-19T14:37:18Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > I think counting as a percentage of “procedures” is cheating, to be honest. A person in the hospital for three days may have dozens of “procedures,” depending on who’s doing the billing. And when things go screwy, more procedures are often needed to try to fix that, further diluting the ratio. I think it would be more honest to look at it as A) the ranking in terms of total deaths annually or B) per hospitalization, with perhaps allowances made for long term care. Each procedure has a chance of going wrong and leading to accidental death, so I think it’s a valid stat. However, if we do the numbers based on hospital admissions in the US, ([36,156,245](http://www.aha.org/research/rc/stat-studies/fast-facts.shtml) 2012 figures) the percentage raises to .009%. This is overstated because not all accidental hospital deaths occur after admission. Even so, I’ll take those odds. ---
**Author:** ![dada2fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ccd318/32.png) [@dada2fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dada2fish)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/49 "2014-11-20T02:05:04Z")
My sister was 5 months pregnant with her second child and was having trouble holding down food, throwing up constantly and was very tired and weak. The emergency room doctor gave her a prescription that we found out later was for a category C drug which is dangerous for pregnant women. He brushed her off and said flippantly, “It’s no big deal. You just have a virus. it’s not like you have a brain tumor or anything.” Well, she got worse. She went to a different hospital and while she was in the waiting room, a random doctor walked by, took one look at her and knew she was in bad shape. He immediately ordered her her on a gurney and put her on IV fluids since she was dangerously dehydrated. After a series of tests they found out the problem. Ten points if you can guess what it was? ---
**Author:** ![Tracyfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f14d63/32.png) [@Tracyfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tracyfish)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/50 "2014-11-20T05:31:53Z")
My mother-in-law had a misdiagnosed illness last year, although she didn’t die from it. For two months, she had no appetite and couldn’t really hold food down. She lost something like forty pounds in a month or two. The clinic where she was a patient kept telling her that she had gastroenteritis and at some point prescribed a medication with some serious, potentially permanent side effects. She ended up in the ER the Sunday before Thanksgiving, where the doctor took one look at her white blood cell count and told her she had leukemia. It turns out she has chronic myelogenous leukemia. She told me later that the person who saw her at the clinic looked at her blood tests and said, “I don’t know why your white blood cell count is so high.” Her white blood cell count was somewhere around 60 times the high end of normal. A year later, she’s doing fine, but I don’t get why the person at the clinic didn’t question her high white blood cell count more. ---
**Author:** ![HoneyBadgerDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honeybadgerdc/32/1033_2.png) [@HoneyBadgerDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HoneyBadgerDC)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/51 "2014-11-20T06:28:20Z")
I know several people who had delayed diagnosis of cancer even when all the symptoms were clear enough that their friends were telling them they had cancer. A close friend of mine was being treated for kidney infection and had lost close to 50# in 4 months before he was tested for cancer. He survived but lost a lot of useful parts. ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Boods](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Ms\_Boods](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Boods)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2014, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/52 "2014-11-20T17:32:57Z")
My grandmother. Ended up in the ER after getting a bit of a bump to the head in a car accident. She was cheerful and raising hell when she mentioned to the nurse that she had a bit of a headache. Without asking or consulting my grandmother’s medical record (which had been pulled and was there present), the nurse handed my grandmother a couple of aspirin, which, in her shaken state, she necked. She was allergic to aspirin. So into intensive care she goes, and gets worse and worse with the treatment. Sat keeping vigil at her bedside, my uncle notices the glucose IV. My grandmother was diabetic. No wonder she was getting worse. Her diabetes was also noted in her records and on her chart. So a two-fer, I guess, at what was presumably a proper hospital in Baltimore (no idea the name, as I can’t be arsed to ring my mother out in the States at the moment, and I was only 10 years old at the time, as it was 1975). Unforrunately, my dad and uncle managed to screw up completely the possibility of a lawsuit. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/53 "2014-11-21T06:56:17Z")
There’s a story about my distant in-law relative; I don’t know if it even makes sense. Blood thinners are of course contra-indicated for someone undergoing surgery, but the hospital neglected to stop that medication which may have contributed to a woman’s death shortly after surgery. The error was discovered because the woman’s daughter suspected poisoning by her mother’s 2nd husband and insisted on post-mortem tests. The part of the story that may not make sense is that when testing was done it was done on bones and ashes! (Are such tests possible?) ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/54 "2014-11-21T16:29:39Z")
My friend’s doctor always tells him “If I can keep you out of the hospital you’ll be ok.” I think hospitals, especially the doctors and administration, have the best interests of the patient in mind. But practical day-to-day business and fatigue undermine that. Plus a lot of the lower-level workers are hit-or-miss in their care. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/55 "2014-11-21T19:25:20Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > The error was discovered because the woman’s daughter suspected poisoning by her mother’s 2nd husband and insisted on post-mortem tests. The part of the story that may not make sense is that when testing was done it was done on bones and ashes! (Are such tests possible?) For things such as heavy metal poisoning yes, absolutely, and what I know about forensic chemistry fits on the pointy end of a pin. While the parts of “cop procedurals” where the DNA test is ready in 5 minutes are crap, the amounts of tests that a good forensic team with access to appropriate equipment can do is pretty amazing. ---
**Author:** ![Long\_Time\_First\_Time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ad7895/32.png) [@Long\_Time\_First\_Time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Long_Time_First_Time)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/56 "2014-11-21T22:12:03Z")
> [@Shmendrik](#): > > What an awful story. As a resident physician, I have seen patients who have died at least partly or entirely because of medical error. > > I have to say I’m pretty confused by this story for several reasons.calresearch/poster/IMMC\_2010\_17.pdf]here. I’d think that anesthetic complications leading to subcutaneous anesthesia might include severe trauma to the airway during intubation, or malfunction of the valves in the anesthesia machine, which could lead to very high pressure in the lungs as the gas has nowhere to escape, which could lead to severe lung damage and subcutaneous emphysema. However, the description you were given of subcutaneous emphysema occurring as a result of inattention to a healthy patient in the recovery room after an uneventful surgery doesn’t make much sense. Incidentally, the various gasses used in the OR (oxygen, air, nitrous oxide) all have pipes which are incompatible with each other so that they can’t be incorrectly connected to the supply source. I can make a guess of what happened here as it recently happened to a patient in the hospital where I work. In most hospitals, oxygen and sometimes other gases are piped through the building. There are outlets in the walls or ceilings in areas where patients are typically under anesthesia. The gas coming out of the wall is at very high pressure. Usually the hose from the wall is put into some type of valve/machine type device that reduces it to pressures that are not harmful. If someone mistakenly takes the high pressure oxygen hose that is coming off the hospital’s main system and connects it directly to a patient’s breathing tube, the pressure is high enough to rupture the trachea and then force gas under the skin. It’s a horrible way to go, and the solace is that the victim is usually under anesthesia at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/57 "2014-11-23T18:27:33Z")
> [@Long\_Time\_First\_Time](#): > > I can make a guess of what happened here as it recently happened to a patient in the hospital where I work. In most hospitals, oxygen and sometimes other gases are piped through the building. There are outlets in the walls or ceilings in areas where patients are typically under anesthesia. The gas coming out of the wall is at very high pressure. Usually the hose from the wall is put into some type of valve/machine type device that reduces it to pressures that are not harmful. > If someone mistakenly takes the high pressure oxygen hose that is coming off the hospital’s main system and connects it directly to a patient’s breathing tube, the pressure is high enough to rupture the trachea and then force gas under the skin. > > It’s a horrible way to go, and the solace is that the victim is usually under anesthesia at the time. Do you have a link to a story about that incident? I find it very difficult to understand, as high pressure gas lines have fittings which only allow them to be connected to the gas inlets on ventilators or anesthesia machines, and the breathing circuit to the patient connects somewhere else entirely on the machine. Connecting a breathing circuit to the wall oxygen is sort of equivalent to trying to plug your USB device into a light bulb socket, or hooking up a patient’s IV to the water main - I don’t see how it could be done accidentally. The patient would not be under anesthesia either, because the anesthesia machine would have to be bypassed in this scenario. There is a rare scenario where the patient is relatively directly connected to high pressure oxygen - an emergency technique called transtracheal jet ventilation, used when a patient can’t be intubated or ventilated. It involves inserting a large needle into the trachea. High pressure is required because the diameter of the needle is so small compared to a normal endotracheal tube. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/58 "2014-11-23T18:48:08Z")
> [@MissSwitac](#): > > My sister was 5 months pregnant with her second child and was having trouble holding down food, throwing up constantly and was very tired and weak. > > The emergency room doctor gave her a prescription that we found out later was for a category C drug which is dangerous for pregnant women. > > He brushed her off and said flippantly, “It’s no big deal. You just have a virus. it’s not like you have a brain tumor or anything.” > > Well, she got worse. She went to a different hospital and while she was in the waiting room, a random doctor walked by, took one look at her and knew she was in bad shape. > > He immediately ordered her her on a gurney and put her on IV fluids since she was dangerously dehydrated. > > After a series of tests they found out the problem. Ten points if you can guess what it was? Without reading the rest of the thread: Urinary tract infection? Very common cause of n/v in pregnant women. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/59 "2014-11-23T18:50:33Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Without reading the rest of the thread: Urinary tract infection? Very common cause of n/v in pregnant women. “Brain tumor” makes a better punch line. I’m going with that. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2014, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883/60 "2014-11-23T23:15:00Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > “Brain tumor” makes a better punch line. I’m going with that. I totally skipped over that, because I saw more than one case of “hyperemesis gravidarum” disappear, or at least improve dramatically, when an otherwise silent UTI was cleared up. :o [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-of-anyone-that-died-because-of-hospital-or-doctor-error/704883.md?page=4)