I saw this kind of stuff all the time for 12 years that I worked in hospitals.
That is why I have no respect for for MD’s.
Back in the 1960’s they covered up for each other.

Wow! That is such a shame.

This is why if I ever have to have an operation like this, I’m going to get a tatoo saying something to the effect of, “operate here” or “remove this kidney.” That should make it clear what needs to be done.

why is the surgeon’s identity a secret ? the public should be able to identify quacks, no ?!?

The question that I must ask is how could this tragedy have happened if they had been following the National Patient Goals and the Universal Protocol established by the Joint Commission regarding preventing wrong site, wrong procedure and wrong person surgery. The Universal Protocol requires preoperative verification betw2eenh staff and patie3nt as to what is going to happen and where. There is also a requirement that the operative site be marked and verified by several specific individuals to include the patient and the surgeon. In addition there is a requirement for a time out immediately before the surgery for a total review of the entire process to include right patient, correct site and procedure and availability of all requisite medical devices and any other needed items. Every staff member, family member and patient must be in total agreement that the right procedure is about to be accomplished and if there are any disagreements they must be reconciled before the procedure is accomplished.

Just some thoughts.

So is there anyone out there who lacks pride in a medical system and an education system that would allow this to happen?
Wasn’t it just months or days ago that a surgeon in FLA removed the wrong leg?
Any why isthe hospital withholding the name of the DR?

The incompetence of this surgeon has just sentenced the patient to: 1) death, 2) lifetime on dialysis, or 3) a kidney transplant and anti-rejection medication for the rest of his/her life.

How hard can it be to verify which one of the two kidneys needed to be removed?

50% of all Medical school graduates finish in the botton of their class I guess this was one of them.

“So, was that my right or your right?”

This is so sad, and the patient is in my prayers. This gross negligence happens all too often. I had a bi-lateral hysterectomy, and the surgeon left behind my left fallopian tube, that tube was the source of many years of pain prior to the surgery and after. I suffered for two years after the surgery because he insisted he removed everything, and every other doctor assumed the original did his job. Finally another surgeon found the problem, but the damage has been done and I will live in pain for the rest of my life. Doctors need to be held accountable for their mistakes. If held accountable for all mistakes, not just those that end in death, maybe less would end in death, or with people left with permanent damage.

When are we going to get a national registry that contains data on doctors that are sued for malpractice and/or have committed egregious surgical errors such as this? The medical community goes out of its way to protect incompetent doctors just like the teachers union protects incompetent teachers. The public needs to wake up and demand this information be made available so we can make informed decisions when we are selecting a doctor.

Unbelievable!! I had a masectemony 8 years ago & like, Dr. Deal said, they marked the right one while I was still awake. Reading a story like that is scary! I feel really bad for the doctor who has to live with this mistake, not to mention how awful I feel for the patient. Does the patient go to the top of the transplant list?

How can the Methodist hospital and this surgeon possibly make this right?
The surgeon just condemned the patient to a lifetime of chemotherapy and radiation, another surgery to remove the cancerous kidney; now because the surgeon, and by “Vicarious Liability” the hospital, removed the patient’s healthy kidney — now the patient is condemned additionally to a lifetime, what little is left thanks to the surgeon, a lifetime on dialysis.
I was a dialysis nurse. I know what it is to have patients tell me they no longer have fine motor control in their hands because of the dialysis shunt that must be installed in their forearm. I know what it is to have patients tell me they can’t feel their fingers, thanks to the shunt surgery.
Cancer patients are ineligible for organ transplants.
How can this possibly be made right?
Is the Methodist hospital going to assume 100% of this patient’s medical care, AND COSTS, for the rest of this patient’s life?
I may be prejudiced. I survived a medical mistake. I was killed, thanks to a nurse’s error in surgical recovery; I later took my paramedic experience and went to nursing school, and in my years as a nurse saw to it that none of my patients were ever treated the way I was in that dark moment.

Yea, and if Bush had/has his way, these type of quacks or the hospitals can’t be sued over their deadly mistakes made on patients.

Dr. Deal is correct. There must have been a monumental breakdown in the system from the time this patient was in pre-op until the operation was over. The number of hands that this patient and his records (should have)went through before the first incision was made…the safety procedures that were ignored… good grief! And not one person caught it before hand! It’s absolutly mind boggling!

And yes to Bill from Santa Fe: MD’s do cover for one another- happens more than it should. I worked in the hospital clinical setting for >25 years. I’m out now due in part to the increasing pressure to cut staff and internal politics. Hospitals are becoming no better than an assembly line for sick people. May as well work for Ford or GM- and you would get a lot more respect from management if you did!

One doctor on Fox News stated that medical mistakes and resulting deaths are under-reported. He stated that the reported numbers are from 50,000 to 100,000 per year. This means that we could possibly be three or four times safer on highways at 70mph than lying in a hospital bed going nowhere. I can hardly wait for some feckless bureaucrat to be in charge of medical utilization reviews under a “socialized health-care system” - we all might as well check it in early to avoid the pain and missing body parts. Moreover, I had no idea that a person could get a new anus, but the Germans have one-upped us again (no pun intended). I’m no doctor, but I can tell the difference between a leg and an anus and Uranus and Jupiter and Saturn . . . .

Dr. Uke is a wonderful surgeon

What people are failing to read here is this. The Doctor was in the right, the person who documented his medical records screwed up. According to his medical records he took the correct kidney. You wanna nail someone, go after the person who screwed up the documentation.

I THINK THIS PATIENT IS ENTITLED TO A FREE KIDNEY TRANSPLANT & ALL REQUIRED MEDICATION FOR SUCH, AS SOON AS THEY ARE STRONG ENOUGH - PAID FOR DIRECTLY BY THE SURGEON WHO MADE THE MISTAKE & THE HOSPITAL, CLINIC THAT SCREWED UP SO ROYALLY!

A German retiree is taking a hospital to court after she went in for a leg operation and got a new anus instead, the Daily Telegraph is reporting.

The woman woke up to find she had been mixed up with another patient suffering from incontinence who was to have surgery on her sphincter.

The above e-mail appeared in the same one that advised of the surgery removing the wrong kidney of a man and leaving the cancerous one.

This is outrageous - what are the other members of the surgery team doing when these errors occur? I can’t believe that there isn’t more involvement and supervision of the surgery. It seems that there is more medical malpractice going on than ever before, yet more restrictions as far as prosecution of such cases. The doctors who performed the above surgeries as well as other assistants are guilty of total neglect and should have their licenses revoked. I can’t even imagine how they could possibly explain their mistakes unless they were intoxicated, on drugs, mentally ill. The matter is disgusting!!

I think he should be investegated for drug/alcahol abuse. His actions make me feel sick.

My wife had a cancerous kidney removed last June. The doctor came in, reviewed it with my wife and then initialed the correct side of her body where he was to operate. This way there would be NO mistake…..
An additional safeguard would to have the patient also put their initials on the correct spot.

THE DOCTOR THAT REMOVED THE WRONG KIDNEY SHOULD DONATE ONE OF HIS TO THE PATIENT,IF THEY ARE COMPATABLE, IF NOT HE SHOULD DONATE ONE TO SOMEONE OF THE TRANSPLANT LIST.

Medical malpractice insurance isn’t expensive because of so many patients suing… it’s because of so many stupid doctors such as this one. (And believe me, I know a few stupid doctors…)

I think the surgeon should have to give the patient one of his kidneys. Of course I am making light of a tragic situation. Tragic for the patient and the surgeon. Remember, doctors are only human.

Living in Minnesota, it is refreshing to see a hospital take two important steps. First, they clearly and decisively admitted the error. Secondly, the doctor took full responsibility insteading of hiding behind lawyers or making excuses.

Our prayers go out to the family, the doctor and the hospital. This kind of responsiblity for actions gives the public confidence that while tragic accidents do occur, we will do what is right.

Why didn’t you print the doctor’s name???????? You required my name just to send in a comment. I can see the drive-by liberal media in Minnesotais is just like the liberal media here in eastern North Carolina. Thank you for allowing me to comment.

Comment by Dave D
“Remember, doctors are only human.”

I don’t agree!
I think they are sub-Human-Lower than whale poop!

This happens more than most people realize. The same thing happened to my step-father only it was his healthy lung that was removed. Here is an article in O Magazine (Oprah) regarding his story: http://www.maryafischer.com/oprahmagazine3.html
I’ll never understand how this can happen. There’s simply NO excuse!!! This caused his life to be cut much shorter. Not to mention the misery he went through after. It’s absolutely pathetic.

I have worked in a hospital for over 30years. If JCOAH guielines were followed(pre surgery timeouts,proper side ID’d on patient etc.) this is almost impossible! I’m sure there are more safeguards in place now. But, if they could not follow the safeguards in place already, what makes you think they will follow more safeguards? If you already don’t know right from left looking at a CT won’t help you!

I am a registered nurse and worked in a hospital environment a long time and the doctor isn’t the only one who is responsbile for this tragic mistake. Look at the number of individuals that would have / should have documented in this patient’s medical file some reference to the diseased kidney. This surgeon probably sees hundreds of patients a week and for him to remember every detail about a patient’s condition is very rare, if not impossible. He had to rely on the information provided him. I’m not excusing his action. He should have reviewed films and MRI prior to the surgery. I’m just saying there are many others here that are just as guilty. But, the doctor will be the one to receive all the blame and criticism and pay for this mistake with his career for the rest of his life.

I wish I could say that this shocks me, but it does not. Having just spent a week in the hospital, I can certainly see how things can happen. There is no communication, not between Doctors, Nurses, Labs, or staff. I felt as though I was saying the same thing to everyone I came in contact with, the whole time thinking why is this not in my chart, does no one record what you tell them or what your history is. After being released from the hospital in Georgia, I picked up a copy of my medical report. I was shocked to see so many things in the report that were not true. One of which was that I had a procedure done while I was there that I never had done and it stated under surgical history that I had at some point in my life a hysterectomy, which has never occurred. I am so irritated about this, I am trying to contact someone to get this stuff changed and trust me that is no small task. I feel for this family and pray that some how things will be alright, though I know it does not sound good.

Dr are human I agee but this is nothing more than a careless mistake. You have two kidneys. One is on the right the other is on the left. No brainer! Inexcusable.

Doctors are human and make errors like all people.
This is a very sad story.

Let it be knwon that effective inmmediately should I require any kind of surgery I will perform it myself.

By having access to the internet I should be able to follow instructions from medical web sites, and remove my own kidney if necessary.

This is to avoid the potential risk of some overpaid moron removing the wrong organ, and really screwing me!

I so feel for this woman. I had an incompetent surgeon remove one of my 2 healthy kidneys to give one to my dad and they have to do MRIs and such to know how many valves are attached to each kidney as each kidney can be different even in the same body. Anyway common sense says that you cut x number of valves, you close x number.
And he left one open, but he had plenty of time to go to the other side of my body and see how my liver and all my other organs were. But couldn’t take the time to close the correct number of valves. Then the moron let me bleed internally for 12 hours. Until I coded 3 times.
I will keep this woman in my prayers.

There is one thing we can be sure of, the only winners in this situation will be the lawyers. The only thing worse than a bad doctor is a good lawyer.

Are you kidding me? Just now they have to start double checking to make sure they are not removing the ONLY working organ you have? The very one that is the ONLY thing keeing you alive? And just now they have to double check? I would like to see what the damaged one “looked” like in comparison to the perfectly healthy one he/she had. I am going to go out on a limb here and say even a monkey could tell an Cancerous one, one so bad with cancer it had to be removed mind you, from a perfectly healthy red, unleisioned, one. what do you think?
He should have to give one (preferably both) of his kidneys to the poor patient.

I would seriously question everybody that was in the room if I went to surgery to have my leg removed and woke up to my butt hurting. ” ok who’s been back there ?” and why’s it hurting back there?”

My niece just buried her father who didn’t have to die at all. The doctors did a “real royal
screwup”; and lied to the family about what they did. Only an autopsy proved them wrong.
YES, doctors do cover for each other; and if they are at fault, will even offer to do the autopsy THEMSELVES FREE! Who wants the same doctors to do a free autopsy on a patient
they literally killed?????????????? If I had been those doctors, I WOULD HAVE OFFERED TO DO THE AUTOPSY FREE TOO! COVER! COVER!

i like your thinking Greg. Dr’s would make sure their teams were on the ball if everyone was held responsible for such a mistake. I mean, I can understand that they cant cure everything, and that diagnoses are sometimes wrong. Thats why we go for second opinions. But when you are on the table and there are no other choices made by the patient, you better make sure you cut the right thing or you will pay> PERIOD.

I had kidney cancer and had to have my kidney removed this past December. This story just made me cringe!

When I checked into the hospital my left kidney was marked and I was asked three times why I was there and which kidney was being removed so there was no mistake.

This major surgery and VERY painful. How could it be screwed up? Doesn’t this hospital require two surgeons to be present? The hospital is as much to blame as the incompetent doctor.

don’t you think a doc would know?!?

why is it that in minnesota you can’t sue hospitals or doctors for these kinds of mistakes????

I think if doctors & hospitals were held more accountable for their mistakes they would pay more attention.

Say something and your crucified. I understand how this happens. After the hard time I have been given, If I ever do work again, I will be very hestitant to say anything. CYA! Productivity is all that matters in hospitals.
There is no way to complain and not lose your job!
I am living proof!
Want to see my EEOC complaint?
I’m not working for trying to say something was wrong!

This is difficult for me to understand. Does this doctor not know the difference in appearance of a healthy kidney versus a cancerous kidney? Maybe they look the same … but I would think not. A friend of mine just had a historectomy (spelling?) … then had to return two weeks later to remove an ovary which was not removed during the original surgery … note that the ovary left was clearly visible on tests showing it was bad. Then two weeks later she is back in the hospital again for an infection. The AMA wants you to think their doctors are the greatest in the world and worth the enormous fees they charge. I will believe doctors are great when they gaurantee their work. If someone does not gaurantee their work, doesn’t that mean they really don’t know what they are doing? The American medical system must be forced to improve … there are just to many careless mistakes. And the only way to do it is by a national health care system which will control costs and disclipine doctors, etc. PLEASE VOTE FOR SOMEONE WHO WILL ADDRESS THIS PROBLEM.

“declined to name the surgeon”

Is this a child who must be shielded? What an unconscionable cover-up by the medical community protecting its own. Have doctors forgotten that ‘do no harm’ refers to their patients, not their colleagues?

Hey Bill in Santa Fe, could we use you as a professional witness in a “class(less) action lawsuit”? Let’s watch for the advertisements from the “Contact the Law Firm of(add your favorite TV lawer ad here) for your just compensation”

This is something that I personally witnessed twice in my 30-year career working in a HUGE teaching hospital.
It stems from doctors being prima donnas, primarily, and the huge RUSH to herd patients through like cattle to the slaughter.
My guess is that this hospital will no longer be called Park Nicollete Methodist. It will be owned by the family of the patient who was left with a cancerous kidney while her good kidney lays on the pathologist’s table.
What a tragedy!

This is just outrageous. Where is the outrage by the self-righteous “tort reformers” when something like this happens? Damage caps, legal reforms, loser pays and more are their rallying cries, but what would Bush, Gulliani, etc do if this happened to their wives, their daughters?

Has anyone thought that this man might have turned out to be one of the best surgeons in the world? It is to bad becausse we need more doctors and nurses. I wonder how long he was a surgeon and how carefully his records were checked. Jane E.

This is obviously tragic and should not have happened. My heart goes out to the patient and family. But the real crime will follow; this mistake will lead to a huge lawsuit and huge profits for a bunch of a lawyers, not the victim. Why do we never hear about such tragedies involving lawyers? Every day some lawyer costs his/her client untold monetary loss, grief, and misery due solely to incompetence, often after years of legal wrangling to get “one’s day in court”. Yet how many times are lawyers ever sued for malpractice? Or held accountable at all for their pathetic failures? Lawyers always talk about the need to “police” doctors, but who polices them? Many of our nations ills would be solved if more lawyers would accept malpractice cases against other lawyers — it would keep them occupied (leaving everyone else alone) and thin the ranks of unqualified, ambulance-chasing vultures who prey on the guilty and innocent alike.

UH OH, I’M SCHEDULED TO HAVE A KIDNEY REMOVED IN 10 DAYS. LOVELY STORY. I’M GOING TO WRITE ON THE SURGEON’S HAND, LEFT KIDNEY STUPID, LEFT.

Maybe Doctors should have random drug testing?

Maybe Doctors should submit to random Drug Testing

maybe Doctors should have random Drug Testing?

They’ll have to go in again and get the other one, and then she’ll have no kidney at all. She’ll spend the rest of her life on dialysis.

There’s another story today about a woman who entered surgery for an operation on her leg, but instead got a new anus.

You can hardly turn around without reading a similar story. My wife went to a dentist to have an impacted tooth extracted, and the dentist cut into the other side, and then complained that he couldn’t find the tooth in the X-ray.

There should be procedures to ensure that these things can’t happen.

I needed an MRI in regard to my right leg, and the nurse wrote on the order, left leg. I had to correct him, and he changed it. If I hadn’t spotted it, I guess they would have charged me a thousand bucks to photo the wrong leg.

Addressing some of the comments:

There is a national database of doctors who have been found liable for malpractice. It is called the national practitioner data bank. However, you should recognize that some of the best doctors in the country have been sued for malpractice, often because they were willing to take on risky cases that other doctors wouldn’t.

The article indicates that that surgery was scheduled and planned to remove the kidney that was actually taken out. It was mis-identified in the office paperwork at the time of scheduling. Such an error would not have been stopped by means of a hold point in the OR. There is a good chance that the patient did not know which kidney had the abnormality either. This would explain why the mistake was not discovered until the pathologist looked at the specimen several days later. If the patient knew the other kidney was supposed to be removed, the error would have been discovered the moment he/she woke up with bandages on the wrong side. There is a possibility that the patient never knew for sure which kidney had the problem in the first place. Should the doctor have his kidney removed (as suggested above) because a clerk or nurse in his office wrote down “left” instead of “right”?

I HAD 3 TUMORS REMOVED FROM MY BREAST 3 DIFFERENT TIMES. EACH TIME I HAD THE NURSE MARK AN ( X ) AND THE WORD “NO” SO THAT THEY DIDN’T CUT INTO THE WRONG ONE. WHY, WHY, WHY DON’T PEOPLE LEARN BY NOW THAT YOU CAN’T TRUST ANYONE NO MATTER WHAT KIND OF DEGREE THEY HAVE… PEOPLE MAKE MISTAKES YOU HAVE TO BE THE ONE TO MAKE SURE THAT, THAT MISTAKE IS NEVER DONE ON YOU ! TO EVERYONE IF YOUR GOING UNDER THE KNIFE GRAB A MARKER AND START MARKING YOUR BODY WITH ARROWS, CIRCLES AND X’s I WISH THIS PERSON THE BEST , IT’S SO SAD.

What happened to the healthy kidney??? Simply put it’s poor reporting when the most obvious question is not answered. grrrrr!!

I lost my right kidney to cancer in 2006. Before they operated, there were several individuals who asked me the same question over and over again.”Which kidney are we removing?”
They even marked my right side with a big black X so there was no question which kidney was to be removed. I feel extreme sadness for this patient. Having a kidney removed is a VERY, VERY, VERY painful operation, especially if it was an open nephrectomy. This patient deserves a lifetime of free care from this surgeon, and this hospital, since his life expectancy has just been shortened by a significant amount of time, and he still has cancer! My prayers go out to this person……………………

Dear Fox:

It is very sad that these things do happen. I believe we must be more careful in looking over the patients charts very,very carefully and become more involved in the patient. If need be have the floor nurse mark the spot so these Doctors will know also.

The old saying is FOLLOW UP-FOLLOW-UP and, if Doctors need another set of eyes please consult another of their PEERS.

This should not HAPPEN today in OPERATING RROMS. We. the public is scared to death to know is our Doctor on heavy medicine,or an Alcoholic or on other substances. After all, they learn in med school to do with OUT SLEEP. and ,the aftermath is sometime tragic.

It would be nice for our Doctors to have a good nights rest and concentrate on what he is doing.

Respectfully Submitted:

Gerrye Johnston
Carroll County,
Maryand

To Dr. Jack Crow (we know that’s not your real name) Your March 19, 5:50 p.m. comments are so biased, angry and untrue. If you are a doctor, you should prescribe yourself a tranquilizer, and go back and read the Hippocratic Oath, remember the one about “do no harm”. Here’s a patient who did nothing wrong and had the extreme misfortune of developing horrible cancer and then finding out he/she had the wrong (healthy) organ removed which the medical director of that hospital called an “unthinkable” mistake, and you think that a REAL crime occurs when there’s a lawsuit. How do you know how much a victim/lawyer receives in a state that has restrictions on lawsuits? And even if so, how is that a “crime” in any logical comparison to what happened to this patient? Our nations ills would be solved if there were lawyers malpractice suits against others, according to you. Please explain to me how that would get the subprime mess solved? the immigration issue? the war in Irag? Poverty, homelessness, etc.
To B. Jones March 19 at 10:25 p.m. another apologist and delusional thinker. The national data base is not open to the public and never has been despite years of consumer advocacy. YOU should recognize that some of the best doctors in the country have been sued for malpractice, not because they take on risky cases, but because they have in fact committed malpractice. You don’t even get your facts straight before you comment. It was not “several” days later that the pathologist looked at the specimen, it was THE NEXT DAY. Most likely the patient was still out of it on Post op day 1. If you think this surgeon doesn’t have any responsibility for not identifying the correct kidney to be removed before he removed it under these circumstances, then you are truly delusional.

My mother also had the wrong kidney removed in 2006 at a Nashville,TN hospital. She had a second surgery to try and remove as much of the cancer as possible. She lived from Mar. 2006 untill July without dialysis and then had to have it 3 times a week,which was pure hell for her. She had to stop dialysis in Sept. She lived till Sept.21, 2006. The mistake started with the radiologist who dictated left kidney in one paragraph and right kidney in other paragraph, on the same page. No one caught this mistake,until the pathologist said there was no cancer in the kidney that was removed. Our Mom suffered needlessly,both physically and emotionally. Her second surgery was NOT done by the doctor who did the first surgery,but he has not stopped seeing patients or doing surgery. Glad that the dr. in Minn. at least had the good grace to stop seeing patients. We in this country need to wake up. These mistakes are happening much too often. My prayers are with this patient and his or her family. This is a hell that I would not wish for anyone. It changes lives forever and many times takes lives.

In a recently reported story about the deadly horrors taking place in our Canadian hospitals it was revealed that some 12,000 (twelve thousand) patients are killed every year in Canada due to “hygiene problems” in our Canadian hospitals. Most of those deaths are preventable and they certainly qualify for compensation/justice from the hospitals that killed them. The total number of patients killed by “medical errors” in our Canadian hospitals is approx. 24,000 (twenty four thousand) per year. That’s on top of the 12,000 killed by Canadian hospitals’ “hygiene problems”. The United States with a population ten times that of Canada would be expected to have ten times ( 10 x 24,000 = 240,000 ) as many casualties/victims from medical errors, but your ( U.S. ) approx. number is 100,000 such deaths. This means that our Canadian medical facilities are more than two times as dangerous to their patients. To allow “business as usual” in our Canadian hospitals is not an option because that would mean allowing our (Canadian) medical establishment to continue to sicken, injure, maim and kill over 150,000 Canadians, an atrocious number, every year. Signed, Mark Mager, of London, Ontario, Canada. markmager@rogers.com