I just found out today that a co-workers daughter had died in an operation to remove a cyst from her ovaries.
This is not something I would have associated with possiblity of death, in regards to the operation. I’m not sure when he will be back, and its not really a question that I want to ask him.
While every individual case is different, is there some general reason why some times this procedure can go wrong enough to cause death. I don’t know exactly what the procedure was , but I am going to assume that it was a lyrascopy ? (sp).
Sometimes, ovarian cysts can be very, very large before they are detected. I’d imagine removal of a very big one could be quite stressful to the system.
Be careful not to let our speculation here get circulated as the truth of what happened, though.
NP, IANAD however I have had lap surgery to remove an ovarian cyst the size of a grapefruit [and other procedures] and I just remember the instructions of what not to do, and most of the cautionary stuff I had to sign off upon pre-op.
It is always best to wait for the people actually doing the autopsy to come out with the results … though it isn’t instant like on TV it can actually take up to a month or so.
As they keep telling me every time I donate blood: *Any *invasive procedure always carries a risk of death.
And it’s true. It doesn’t matter how minor the procedure, if you open the body, you take a chance of dying. Infections, shock reactions, strokes from blood clots and many, many other rare events do occur even for something as simple as donating blood.
In the case of general anaesthetic you get to add in all the additional complications of anaesthesia that aruvqan mentioned. General anaesthesia is a real balancing act. It’s a careful balance between shutting the brain down enough that the patent doesn’t move or feel anything, and keeping the brain alive enough that it can be brought back to normal function. That requires constant monitoring just to keep the patient alive. Even without adverse reactions to the aneasthetic, sometimes things go wrong and the patient goes under too deeply and/or doesn’t respond to the drugs designed to bring the back. It isn’t a bad reaction per se, it’s just that everybody is slightly different. It’s a slight, though real, risk with any general anaesthesia. Any time we go under, we may not come back out. Nobody;s fault, it just comes under the heading of “shit happens”.
And one other thing to consider, since you’re not getting info directly from the doctor, you might never know exactly what happened. People can misunderstand or reinterpret what a doctor says, and the end result could be something that doesn’t seem to make any sense. And the more people it filters thru before it gets to you, the higher the likelihood.
When I was hospitalized in November for a ruptured hemorrhagic ovarian cyst, one of the things they kept an eye out for was system-wide septic shock caused by the flooding of my pelvic cavity with the contents of the cyst. Apparently it’s a real danger. I was also told that sometimes the cysts get so large that they twist the ovary and/or the fallopian tube, which is a medical emergency.
So, there are some other possibilities as well as the ones mentioned already.
I feel bad for your co-worker. In this day and age, it doesn’t seem to us like something as “simple” as that kind of surgery should result in death. We’re so used to minor surgeries like that being no big deal.
Some ovarian cysts are cancerous. Having cancer increases your risk of blood clots.
Any surgery can go wrong- there could have been damage to the bowel, bladder, kidneys or blood vesels which could have caused death.
There could have been an electrolyte imbalance.
There could have been a reaction or allergy to medication, or an error with dosage.
There are any number of things one can die from during surgery.
I hope your co-worker has some answers and that the answers he gets help him come to terms with his loss.