MISTAKES OF SURGEONS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 16042, 1 February 1923, Page 10

MISTAKES OF SURGEONS.

REVELATIONS RESENTED

PATIENTS NEED FAITH.

LONDON, Jan. 13.—“ Nothing can be better calculated to disturb a patient’s confidence in his physician or surgeon than Colonel Burrow’s book, ‘Mistakes and Accidents of Shrgery,’ ” saya Sir Alfred Rice-Oxley, a leading physician, in a letter to the Weekly Despatch. “Tie average layman regards his physician or surgeon as infallible. Confidential relations between doctor and patients are often the first step to a cure.

“It cannot be too strongly emphasised that the patient must have complete faith in the healer. This book, narrating surgical mistakes, is extremely likely to deter nervous patients from consulting a surgeon. Accidents such as Colonel Burrows describes are so rare as to be practically non-existent. Oversights relating to swabs, dressings, and sponges do not occur once in a thousand times. The very fact that an oversight creates a sensation proves its rarity. Mistakes of diagnosis are commoner, hut even there a grave error is relatively rare.” George Nichols, a former soldier, underwent an operation in July on his abdomen at a Ministry of Pensions hospital near Liverpool. Ho complained afterwards of pain in the abdomen, and died on December 27. A post-mortem examination showed , that a piece of gauze a foot long arid eight inches wide, used as a swab, had been left in the body after tho operation. At tho inquest a verdict was recorded of death from misadventure by cistitie, accelerated by negligent omission to withdraw the gauze. A doctor said that a leading Liverpool surgeon operated. A crisis arose in tho middle of tho operation owing to terrific bleeding and shock to the man's system. It wan the sister’s duty to count the swabs before and after use.

Tho witness added that he regarded tho oversight as a. “recognised” accident of surgery.