CNN today has a bit of information about the death of John Murtha.
The Democratic congressman recently underwent scheduled laparoscopic surgery at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, to remove his gallbladder. The procedure was “routine minimally invasive surgery,” but doctors “hit his intestines,” a source close to the late congressman told CNN.
That happened in December.
Then;
The National Naval Medical Center issued a statement saying Murtha was admitted January 28 for surgery, but declined to reveal additional details, citing his family’s request for privacy and federal privacy laws.
I’ve done around a thousand lap choles. When I took students to Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles to see surgery, we usually saw pediatric procedures, many of them quite unusual. One day, we were watching a lap chole on a teenager who had developed gall stones, unusual in the pediatric population. I finally had to leave the room as I watched surgeons, quite skilled in other procedures, struggling with the gall bladder.
Laparoscopic surgery involves certain skills that take a lot of practice. You look at a TV monitor and manipulate long instruments inside the abdomen. The instrument goes through the abdominal wall and that creates a fulcrum. When you move your hand to the right, the tip of the instrument goes left. When you move your hand toward the patient’s head, the tip of the instrument goes toward the feet.
Then I thought of this.
I wonder how many lap chole’s the Navy Medical Center does a year and what their complication rate is ? We’re not likely to find out. Remember this story?
Maybe they did everything right but there should not be bowel injuries from that procedure.
Tags: health care
Interesting insights.
I live near an Indian Health Service clinic. There are endless complaints about the quality of care. The doctors I know that work there are good competent people, but there is something about bureaucracies and the attendant politically correct office politics that grind the thing down.
With no doctor draft, the military has trouble recruiting although the HMOs and Obama have no doubt improved things. Some specialties are especially hard and the heart surgeon that was in that story had been run out of several civilian hospitals.
But you had a few perfs of your own, didn’t you?
No, but I fixed some.