A patient woke up after a supposedly left-leg surgery just to find out that the surgeon did it on the wrong leg. The incident is an addition on the list of the rare cases of wrong site surgery.
The patient, 34, who wished to have her name private, went to the Halifax Hospital Medical Center on July 3 because of a vascular pain affecting her left leg. The specialist recommended that she undergo vascular graft surgery on her left leg. However, for some reason, the staff prepared the procedure for her right leg.
According to the investigation conducted by Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration, the surgeon marked the patient's left leg with a pen prior to the operation. The patient even told the operating room nurse supervisor that she will be having her left leg done but the nurse seemed to miss it.
Only the nurse anesthetist had noticed that the operation was done on the wrong leg but they were almost done. They immediately stopped the operation then moved to the correct leg for the same procedure.
When the patient woke up, the surgeon discussed to her that the right leg surgery was also necessary and asked her to sign a consent for the wrong leg. The surgeon, who's name was not disclosed in the report of AHCA, tried to justify the wrong site surgery that happened.
While the surgeon and the operating team insist that they did not do anything wrong, the agency is still investigating as it took them 15 days before they have reported the wrong site surgery incident to them.
"We had a wrong-site surgery. We had a system in place, but we did not proceed in the proper way," said hospital spokesman John Guthrie to the Orlando Sentinel.
"We self reported. We're not denying it. We have policies in place, and training in place, but the system broke down because of the human element," he said.
The surgeon and the operating team has been suspended because of the incident.
According to the ACHA, they have already recorded 35 cases of wrong site surgeries in Fla. in which there was one case where the operation was done on the wrong patient.
The incident was first reported by the Orlando Sentinel.
