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In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

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Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#141

Post by buu700 »

Johnny555 wrote: post #112
alasdair_ wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a guy who went there (McMurdo in Antartica) the year after this happened (so similar situation - there is only one doctor that needs to do everything for everyone). Again, you're there for a long time and there is no help coming if you have a problem in the middle of winter. Before you go, they do as much as possible to ensure you won't have medical issues once you get there. One of the things is that they str…

that they strongly suggest you get your wisdom teeth taken out. The guy I know did so a few weeks before leaving. That seems to fall under the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" category -- if he was an adult with no prior issues from his wisdom teeth, he'd have been better off either leaving them alone, or having them removed 6+ months prior. I'm surprised they let him do it just a few weeks ahead.

That was my reaction as well. I've had 75% of my wisdom teeth in for a decade+ with no issues. Seems odd to make any major medical decision so arbitrarily.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#142

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

ISL wrote: post #103
fritzo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who would accompany him to jail, a cadaver?

The patient wouldn't die, but the surgeon would have punched a hole in the abdominal cavity on the wrong side. That would create a new wound, but wouldn't fix the initial life-threatening problem. So then, he'd have to punch a hole on the correct side, fixing the problem. After that, the surgeon would have to contend with malpractice concerns while the patient healed from two holes in their chest, one unnecessary.

Malpractice, of course, is civil law. Nobody going to jail.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#143

Post by marcodiego »

digisign wrote: post #134
marcodiego wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English... what a language! The right side was actually the left side. Fortunately the talk was in Portuguese.

direito has the same issue in Portuguese, does it not?

The word "direito" in Portuguese can mean many things: "not broken", "right of law", "discipline of law" and "right side". When you're talking about sides or direction it is clear what meaning it has. Mixing the meaning of the word "direito" in Portuguese is very very rare.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#144

Post by sizzle »

kmano8 wrote: post #94
marcodiego wrote: post #14

I've had an spontaneous pneumothorax when I was a teenager. Had to undergo emergency surgery with only local anesthesia. The surgeon while cutting my chest asked: "You're sure it is this side, right?", which I confirmed. He then said: "Ok, if you're wrong I'm not going to jail alone."

This happened to me in college. Driving home from the movies, chest started to hurt on inhale .. I decided to "sleep it off", which obviously didn't work. Went to the ER in the morning. Got the chest tube and spent about a week seeing if it would heal naturally, then they removed the offending part of my lung, and did a mechanical pleurodesis (a procedure that sticks your lung to the chest wall so it can't collapse).…

Hope you’re doing better now. That is a lot to go through at a young age to say the least.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#146

Post by classichasclass »

dmurray wrote: post #6
tsm wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The patient was now comfortable, felt well and we retired to our seats to recover. Eight hours later I was again summoned by the stewardess to see the patient, who had developed more chest pain and dyspnoea. > I found her sitting on the toilet with the underwater seal drain on a high shelf. All the water and air had syphoned out of the bottle into the chest. The crisis resolved when I placed the underwater seal dra…

Eight hours! It's hard to believe the woman's condition was critical enough to require invasive surgery with these makeshift tools mid-flight, but so stable post-op that the doctors did not recommend an emergency landing. I understand they recommended against landing pre-op because of worries about cabin pressure, but why not after the surgery? She's going to have to come down at some point.

Having been the "is there a doctor on board" doctor before: you make the call based on what's in front of you and the turmoil that would result from a precipitous landing. The case I had to be involved with was a relatively uncomplicated chest pain. I couldn't rule out angina, but the patient was stable and they had aspirin and it started halfway into a 4-hour flight. The patient remained stable all the way through and I released the individual to EMS on the other end. I don't see what an early landing would have bought in my case, and I'm not sure what it would have bought here.

Re: In-flight surgery with a coat-hanger and silverware

#150

Post by et2o »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #105
ISL wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The patient wouldn't die, but the surgeon would have punched a hole in the abdominal cavity on the wrong side. That would create a new wound, but wouldn't fix the initial life-threatening problem. So then, he'd have to punch a hole on the correct side, fixing the problem. After that, the surgeon would have to contend with malpractice concerns while the patient healed from two holes in their chest, one unnecessary.

There's a 'Good Samaritan' law in most states, protecting those that try to help in an emergency in good faith.

Doesn’t apply to a wrong-sided procedure
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