DEATH DURING OPERATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16098, 11 December 1915, Page 8

DEATH DURING OPERATION.

ABNORMAL CONDITION.

Is the course of. an operation to relieve a congenital deformity of the foot, a boy named Joseph Ivan Milicich, seven years old, died on Thursday morning, while tinder the influence of ether. The medical evidence given at the inquest—held yesterday by Mr. F. V. Frazer, S.M.—was to the effect that the anaesthetic was *'- ministered in the ordinary way, by the open method. Just a3 the operation was completed the patient collapsed, and all efforts at restoration were ineffective. According to the post-mortem examiPation the cans-? of death was cardiac and respiratory failure, during the administration of the anesthetic; the predispossjt cause being an enlarged thymus gland—a . gland which in normal circumstances should atrophy at the age of two, but ' ■which, in the case of young Milicich, was „-| |Hin long, and adherent to the left lung."" This abnormal condition conH not, ac- v , cording to two medical witnesses, have > been discernible during life. The coroner;--,. m his verdict, found that the awestheiic had been properly and skilfully adminiswed, and that all usual "rcstoratifa measure* had been taken.