355
Florida surgeon ‘devastated’ over death of patient after removing liver instead of spleen
(www.theguardian.com)
Thomas Shaknovsky botched the surgery of William Bryan, 70, who died on the operating table
According to Shaknovksy’s deposition, after removing Bryan’s liver, the surgeon instructed a nurse to label the organ as a “spleen” – and he also identified it as a spleen in Bryan’s postoperative notes. Shaknovsky later said he had been “mentally compromised” at the time of Bryan’s death, explaining that he was “devastated, demoralized, crying over his passing, felt that I failed him”.
The House of Pod did an episode about this, the host is a doctor and one of his guests for this episode is a surgeon and educator. Some good perspective on how this could happen and exactly how giant of a fuck up it was: https://shows.acast.com/the-house-of-pod-a-medical-podcast/episodes/bonus-sode-revisiting-the-mistakenly-removed-liver