"Hi, everybody!"
Posted on 06/07/2010 10:46:06 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The doctor was the victim of "bad luck," medical board says
The state Board of Medicine has ruled a South Florida surgeon, who took out a healthy kidney instead of a gallbladder during an operation, wasn't inept or careless.
The board said Bernard Zaragoza is a good doctor, but he had bad luck. We'd say it was the patient who had the worst luck.
The unidentified man died of heart failure three weeks after the surgery.
In 2007, Zaragoza operated on an 83-year-old patient who was having some internal issues in Miramar. The patient's kidney was located where his gallbladder should have been, a rare occurrence experts said.
Zaragoza, a University of Miami grad, cut the kidney out before discovering that.
"It's a complication I never heard of, dreamed of, or imagined could happen" he said. "I was completely mortified."
A state hearing officer recommended a penalty of a $5,000 fine and 50 hours of community service. Despite siding with the doctor, the board said it still had to punish him, according to Health News Florida.
"If I could make these costs go away, I would,” a board member said. “But we just can’t.”
Zaragoza has to reimburse the state $25,000 for the state's costs of investigation and prosecution.
Everyone is assuming that this kidney, which was not in the correct anatomical position, would have the normal size and shape. As for its texture aside from the scar tissue it was covered by, he likely didn’t cut into the kidney/gall bladder. He would cut it out, not cut it up.
Scar tissue around a sick gall bladder is common.
You’re assuming this was an anatomically normal kidney. I’m guessing that’s very unlikely given its location. Doing this sort of operation, you’d have to dig through an entire layer of tissue to even make it back to the kidneys in your typical patient. Somethng went horribly anatomically wrong here—and not just in the sense that something didn’t migrate as it should.
In any case, yeah, a kidney and a gallbladder are quite distinct if they’re anatomically normal and not covered in scar tissue.
Say what? Obama finds out about this he’s gonna kick some ass and bust a cap into this blood!
It is impossible for the gall bladder which basically embedded within the liver, and is near the head of the pancreas to be located in the lower back renal cavity.
This just doesn’t compute. Nor does a functioning kidney look anything like a gall bladder in terms of color, shape , size, density, weight.
Doesn't sound like they wanted to do their job. Doesn't sound like an impartial review board.
"Hi, everybody!"
Nobody switches mid-career to become a doctor, but with Obamacare many will be switching out to something more lucrative, and never coming back. We'll have to import doctors trained in third-world countries, start letting nurses perform surgery, and lower the bar for medical school so low they will be graduating affirmative-action idiots. The motivation for smart people to work hard and become a doctor is mostly the prestige, not the pay. Once the prestige and public respect for the profession is gone, so are all the smart people.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.