Brain surgery mix-up: Hospital staff performs brain surgery on wrong patient

We’ve all heard jokes about someone going to the ER with the flu and then leaving two days later after having a perfectly good kidney or appendix removed due to an administrative error.  But just when you think its safe to go to the hospital again, there’s a story coming out of East Africa where a hospital in Kenya performed brain surgery last weekend – on the wrong patient.

UPI reports that the surgical team at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi wasn’t even aware of the brain surgery mix-up until several hours into the craniotomy surgical procedure. That’s how long it took for the doctors to realize that the patient they were working on showed no signs of having a hematoma, “which is a blood clot and was reason for the surgery.”

The mistake was blamed on the two patients’ identification tags. Hospital staff say that the patients’ tags were inadvertently switched. One patient did in fact require surgery to correct a blood clot on the brain, while the other patient only needed a non-invasive procedure to treat some swelling. Unfortunately, the craniotomy was performed on the wrong patient.

The neurosurgeon, two nurses and an anesthesiologist were suspended due to the brain surgery mix-up.  Officials say that the patient who underwent the surgery is in recovery and is doing fine.

The chief executive of Kenyatta National Hospital, Lily Koros, said the hospital “deeply regrets this event and has done all it can to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the patient in question”.

She said the neurosurgeon, ward nurse, theatre receiving nurse and anaesthetist involved in the surgery had been suspended.

Hours later, Kenya’s health minister Sicily Kariuki announced Ms Koros herself had been suspended over the incident.  ~ per news.com

The recent brain surgery mix-up comes only weeks after another investigation into the hospital was initiated to investigate claims of sexual assault on new mothers at the same hospital.  The BBC reports that in addition to allegations of sexual assaults on the new moms, “a woman was able to kidnap a newborn baby there in February. The baby was recovered and returned to his parents a day later.”

In addition to the recent brain surgery mix-up, Kenyatta National Hospital, recognized as the flagship national hospital in Kenya, is blaming insufficient funding for their other reported problems of broken equipment, overcrowding, and long waiting times for treatment. For more on the story, see the video accompanying this article.

~ Written by: Richard Webster, Ace News Today   /   Connect with Richard on Facebook and Twitter