HKr1
July 22nd, 2009, 09:52 AM
Feel bad for this guy. Goes in for some simple surgery, and they screw up bad.
:eek:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534050,00.html
A Texas Airman stationed at an Air Force Base near Sacramento, Calif. has lost both legs after surgeons reportedly botched a routine surgery to remove his gallbladder.
Colton Read, 20, underwent laproscopic surgery last week at David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base near Sacramento. Laproscopic surgery is a minimally invasive procedure that involves making a tiny incision to minimize pain and speed recovery time.
About an hour into the surgery, something went wrong. Read's wife Jessica told CBS11TV.com.
"A nurse runs out, 'we need blood now' and she rounds the corner and my gut feelings is 'oh my God, is that my husband?'" Jessica Read said. Read's wife said an Air Force general surgeon mistakenly cut her husband's aortic valve, which supplies blood to the heart, but waited hours to transport Colton Read to a state hospital with a vascular surgeon.
Read, who is still in intensive care, lost both legs as a result of the blood loss. Meanwhile, his gallbladder still has not been removed. Jessica Read said the doctor admitted his mistake, but under federal law the Reads cannot sue.
The future of Colton Read's career is now uncertain, FOX 40 in Sacramento reported.
Jessica Read told FOX 40 she is appalled that the Air Force is even considering medical retirement or medical discharge while Airman Read is incapable of making any type of decision. She said he is not 100 percent lucid and is still heavily medicated.
The Air Force is conducting a review of the case using outside experts.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/72218.html
A 20-year-old airman was in critical condition at UC Davis Medical Center on Monday, after losing both legs in what his family described as complications of routine gallbladder surgery.
Neither the medical center nor Travis Air Force Base, where Airman 1st Class Colton Read underwent surgery earlier this month, would comment on specifics of his case.
Travis said only that a "serious medical incident" occurred at its David Grant Medical Center on July 9 and is being investigated by the base, a national hospital accrediting commission and the U.S. surgeon general.
Read, who was stationed at Beale Air Force Base east of Marysville, was supposed to get his gallbladder removed laparoscopically at the Travis hospital, said his wife, Jessica Read.
Instead, a device being threaded into his belly nicked or punctured the aorta, a large artery that carries blood from the heart throughout the body, she said.
Surgeons opened his abdomen and were able to repair the breach well enough to save his life, but in the process or afterward, something apparently disrupted the blood supply to his legs.
Jessica Read said she was told the aorta was sewn together incompletely and began leaking, and her husband was flown to UC Davis Medical Center late that afternoon for more specialized vascular surgery.
Her uncle, Dr. Michael Hines, a Texas surgeon, said he was told by the UC Davis surgeon who operated on Colton Read that two branching vessels from the aorta that carry blood to the legs were clotted and closed.
When the surgeon restored the blood supply to those iliac vessels, the legs were so badly swollen and damaged that blood circulated only down to the knees, leaving dead tissue below, Hines said.
Colton Read has undergone multiple surgeries that removed first the lower-right leg, then the lower-left and more of the right, his wife said. The latest surgery, which began Monday evening, was expected to take more tissue from his right thigh, perhaps up to his hip, she said.
The remaining portion of his left leg now appears to be healing well, but it, too, was amputated above the knee, Jessica Read said.
She has heard conflicting accounts of what happened to her husband at Travis — that the surgeon made the initial error, or that it was a mistake by a second-year surgical resident.
Hines, her uncle, said that as a surgeon who has been in practice for 30 years, "I understand how you can puncture something that you don't mean to. That's a recognized complication. The measure of a surgeon is how well they handle those complications."
:eek:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,534050,00.html
A Texas Airman stationed at an Air Force Base near Sacramento, Calif. has lost both legs after surgeons reportedly botched a routine surgery to remove his gallbladder.
Colton Read, 20, underwent laproscopic surgery last week at David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base near Sacramento. Laproscopic surgery is a minimally invasive procedure that involves making a tiny incision to minimize pain and speed recovery time.
About an hour into the surgery, something went wrong. Read's wife Jessica told CBS11TV.com.
"A nurse runs out, 'we need blood now' and she rounds the corner and my gut feelings is 'oh my God, is that my husband?'" Jessica Read said. Read's wife said an Air Force general surgeon mistakenly cut her husband's aortic valve, which supplies blood to the heart, but waited hours to transport Colton Read to a state hospital with a vascular surgeon.
Read, who is still in intensive care, lost both legs as a result of the blood loss. Meanwhile, his gallbladder still has not been removed. Jessica Read said the doctor admitted his mistake, but under federal law the Reads cannot sue.
The future of Colton Read's career is now uncertain, FOX 40 in Sacramento reported.
Jessica Read told FOX 40 she is appalled that the Air Force is even considering medical retirement or medical discharge while Airman Read is incapable of making any type of decision. She said he is not 100 percent lucid and is still heavily medicated.
The Air Force is conducting a review of the case using outside experts.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/72218.html
A 20-year-old airman was in critical condition at UC Davis Medical Center on Monday, after losing both legs in what his family described as complications of routine gallbladder surgery.
Neither the medical center nor Travis Air Force Base, where Airman 1st Class Colton Read underwent surgery earlier this month, would comment on specifics of his case.
Travis said only that a "serious medical incident" occurred at its David Grant Medical Center on July 9 and is being investigated by the base, a national hospital accrediting commission and the U.S. surgeon general.
Read, who was stationed at Beale Air Force Base east of Marysville, was supposed to get his gallbladder removed laparoscopically at the Travis hospital, said his wife, Jessica Read.
Instead, a device being threaded into his belly nicked or punctured the aorta, a large artery that carries blood from the heart throughout the body, she said.
Surgeons opened his abdomen and were able to repair the breach well enough to save his life, but in the process or afterward, something apparently disrupted the blood supply to his legs.
Jessica Read said she was told the aorta was sewn together incompletely and began leaking, and her husband was flown to UC Davis Medical Center late that afternoon for more specialized vascular surgery.
Her uncle, Dr. Michael Hines, a Texas surgeon, said he was told by the UC Davis surgeon who operated on Colton Read that two branching vessels from the aorta that carry blood to the legs were clotted and closed.
When the surgeon restored the blood supply to those iliac vessels, the legs were so badly swollen and damaged that blood circulated only down to the knees, leaving dead tissue below, Hines said.
Colton Read has undergone multiple surgeries that removed first the lower-right leg, then the lower-left and more of the right, his wife said. The latest surgery, which began Monday evening, was expected to take more tissue from his right thigh, perhaps up to his hip, she said.
The remaining portion of his left leg now appears to be healing well, but it, too, was amputated above the knee, Jessica Read said.
She has heard conflicting accounts of what happened to her husband at Travis — that the surgeon made the initial error, or that it was a mistake by a second-year surgical resident.
Hines, her uncle, said that as a surgeon who has been in practice for 30 years, "I understand how you can puncture something that you don't mean to. That's a recognized complication. The measure of a surgeon is how well they handle those complications."