Patient dies after catching fire during surgery

[jimmy olsen]

Man, what a way to go, at least she was unconcious. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32909833/ns/health-health_care/

Patient dies after catching fire during surgery

Relatives left 'devastated' as blaze in operating room kills Ill. woman

updated 1 hour, 22 minutes ago
ST. LOUIS - A woman died after being severely burned in a flash fire while undergoing surgery, a rare but vexing dilemma in operating rooms.

Janice McCall, 65, of Energy, Ill., died Sept. 8 at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., six days after being burned on the operating table at Heartland Regional Medical Center in Marion, Ill., her family's attorney said.

Attorney Robert Howerton said he had requested medical records from the Marion hospital and that he had few details about what happened. He declined to say why McCall was having surgery.

The Tennessee state medical examiner's office said McCall died from complications of thermal burns and classified her death as accidental.

"The family is in shock and suffering their grief," Howerton said Thursday. "Every family has an anchor, and she was it. They're really just devastated."

'Appropriate measures'
Heartland said in a statement only that "there was an accidental flash fire in one of the hospital's operating rooms," injuring a patient before being immediately extinguished. The hospital didn't say how the fire started, but it said, without elaborating, that it was responding with "necessary and appropriate measures."

Heartland declined to comment further on the case, citing the family's request for privacy and federal laws barring the public release of patient medical information.

Surgical flash fires are most often sparked by electric surgical tools when oxygen builds up under surgical drapes. They occur an estimated 550 to 600 times a year — a tiny fraction of the millions of surgeries performed in the U.S. annually — and only kill about one or two people each year, said Mark Bruley, vice president for accident and forensic investigation at the ECRI Institute, a nonprofit health research agency.

Concern over such blazes waned after the 1970s, when highly flammable agents such as ether gave way to safer anesthetics.

But worries have mounted in recent years with increased use of electrosurgical devices and the replacement of cloth hospital drapes with those made of more-flammable, disposable synthetic fabric. Bruley's organization has recommended that anesthesiologists stop using 100 percent oxygen and deliver only what the patient needs, perhaps by diluting the oxygen concentration with room air when surgical tools such as electronic scalpels and cauterizers that could ignite a fire are in use.

"What we've been advocating for years is that the open delivery of oxygen under the drapes essentially has to stop," with some exceptions such as cardiac pacemaker surgery or operations involving a neck artery, Bruley said.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press

[Caliga]

[Neil]

I'm sure the six trillion dollars they'll get in the lawsuit will ease their suffering.

[Caliga]

I'm sure the six trillion dollars they'll get in the lawsuit will ease their suffering.

I wonder if there's any tort reform legislation built into the healthcare bill. 

Oh wait, never mind, Congress is composed primarily of lawyers who make a living taking bribes from lobbyists.

[Valdemar]

It apparently isn't uncommon according to my nursing wife..

I can't recall quite why it happens, but some of the instances seems related to the increased use of lasers to burn of bleeding veins which means tissues (both paper and human) catch fire.

She once heard of a open heart surgery where the heart caught fire 

V

[Darth Wagtaros]

It apparently isn't uncommon according to my nursing wife..

I can't recall quite why it happens, but some of the instances seems related to the increased use of lasers to burn of bleeding veins which means tissues (both paper and human) catch fire.

She once heard of a open heart surgery where the heart caught fire 

V

Your wife is a nurse or your wife is nursing and discussing the issue?

[Tonitrus]

She once heard of a open heart surgery where the heart caught fire 

V

[Caliga]

 

[Agelastus]

She once heard of a open heart surgery where the heart caught fire 

That's...disturbing. No two ways about it.

You have cemented my resolve to not enter a hospital until after I am dead.

[BuddhaRhubarb]

wouldn't have happened in a socialist medical system... fire=too expensive.

[Razgovory]

That's why we need Tort reform.  So doctors don't have to worry about stuff like this.

[Syt]

She once heard of a open heart surgery where the heart caught fire 

V

Mola-Ram image

[Jaron]

I haven't seen a pic but I heard she was....smoking hot.

[Jaron]

She once heard of a open heart surgery where the heart caught fire 

V

Brilliant

[Valdemar]

It apparently isn't uncommon according to my nursing wife..

I can't recall quite why it happens, but some of the instances seems related to the increased use of lasers to burn of bleeding veins which means tissues (both paper and human) catch fire.

She once heard of a open heart surgery where the heart caught fire 

V

Your wife is a nurse or your wife is nursing and discussing the issue?

She a nurse....

V