Routine surgery but dr nicked an artery do I have a case...?
It appears you have a case and I suggest you contact a personal injury attorney near where you live who has had a lot of experience in medical injury cases as you want someone who is experienced. You may ask the local bar association for references. I suggest you phone them during the week and tell them exactly what happened. While you still have some facts in your mind I suggest you write down names, dates, who, where and why everything took place with you as the more information you have the easier it will be for the attorney to put the case together. This is a clear case of medical malpractice and you will win the case because you are permanently disfigured due to the doctor nicking your artery. The doctor knew at the time she was cutting through scar tissue and there is no excuse for proceeding without knowing where the artery was and even were she to know where the artery was she should have proceeded more cautiously so as to not nick an artery. This is sloppy surgery as every doctor learns this early in medical school so they are always watchful and don't make such mistakes. You are also suffering because your incision became infected and the infection was probably contacted in the hospital as hospitals have been shown to be the place where most infections are contacted when one has surgery. You should also be entitled to punitive damages and the attorney you contact will tell you all about this. I suggest you listen to any attorney you interview and use your female intuition to help you figure if the attorney is capable and willing to pursue your case. Look at the attorney's eyes when the attorney speaks with you and see if the attorney looks into your eyes also, as were the attorney to do so it is more likely the attorney is telling the truth and will faithfully represent you. You are not alone as many other people have been hurt in surgery. The doctor's malpractice insurance and/or the hospital will pay the claim so the doctor won't have to pay it out of her own pocket. Whether you know it or not, they almost killed you, and if sepsis sets in due to the infection they may succeed in doing so.
What are the risks of having Inguinal hernia repair surgery?
OK, looks like my cue. The benefits outweigh the risks. 1. Like all surgeries you risk infections like pneumonia, dead tissue being missed and bad hospital food. Compare that to being too far from a hospital if the hernia should break or get an internal infection. Not to mention that a break might fill into the scrotum and make you loose your testes. 2. A doctor can always make a mistake, but the work done for an inguinal is at the pubic line and not the genitals. In fact, it takes reproductive risk away. 3. (Mine was an emergency op and laparotomy.) I waited three weeks before I could move freely and walk to exercise. Five weeks later I was back at work under light duty. I put off seeing what my third testicle was about because it didn't hurt. (Fun having a bit more mass for loving with too.) Looked it up and figured it came from a fall or heavy lifting at work. Cut to a month later, factory work, and a fork truck had stacked the parts tubs too high. I strain and stretch and lift a heavy tub almost on my toes. For the first time it hurts when it gurgles. With twice the size and now like a squeeze bag, I took the hernia to a hospital and they didn't give me a truss. With surgery a month away I'm sent home. I rest but didn't get told to lay rather than sit. With no support for three weeks the hernia got bigger. The weight of it made my penis go numb if I laid on the wrong side with it full. Ten days before the operation I got up to pee and picked a dropped needle off the floor. The hernia twisted (incarcerated hernia) in a way that let in the chicken soup, but not out. An unreducable hernia is bad enough. Peristalsis pumps my sack to the size of a big grapefruit by the time I reach the operating table. My belly hurt but my testes went into shock. Post Op. events aside, it is still best to get your hernia seen to as soon as you can.
Is it legal/ethical for a doctor to deny someone a hysterectomy (when they have endometriosis) on the basis of protecting fertility?
Yes. They can and they will.I’ve been where you are now. Many times. I also have endometriosis as well as adenomyosis and I’ve been told multiple times by doctors that they would never ever perform a hysterectomy on me because they didn’t want to take away my ‘choices’ (i.e. be able to have babies, never mind that between the damage endo and adeno have already done to my body conception would be extremely difficult and dangerous). This was even after I made it clear to them that I didn’t give a rat’s ass about my fertility and I just wanted an end to my pain and suffering. At that point I had stage 4 rectovaginal endo, adeno, and interstitial cystitis and was barely able to function because all of the organs below my rib cage had stopped working properly and I had been wracked with unending constant pain day in and day out for years. But no. We have to think of those children. Sure, you say you don’t want babies now, but surely you’ll change your mind right? Oh you also don’t want to have kids because you don’t want to pass these awful diseases onto them? Don’t think about that. That’s not important. No hysterectomy for you. It was (and is) aggravating and insulting to hear because your suffering gets treated as something of less importance than something you care very little about. As if the only thing important about you is your fertility and if helping you means compromising said fertility than tough luck.On a side note a hysterectomy won’t cure your endo. It does, however, cure adeno (since it’s a disease that only grows inside the uterine wall and if the uterus is removed then BAM! No adeno). Since endo grows outside the uterus and can attach itself into just about every nook and cranny of your abdominal cavity (as well as into even further parts like your chest and legs. It’s rare, but it happens) it can be missed by your surgeon when they go in to remove it and so even if you’ve had a hysterectomy, the disease can still resurface years later. It’s happened. Ask my aunt. And my grandmother. There’s a reason the disease is described like a cancer. It very much behaves like one.
Do doctors/specialists reciprocate services/surgeries with each other for no fee? That is, do plastic surgeons see orthodontic surgeons, orthodontic surgeons see heart surgeons, etc.?
It used to be common to not charge colleagues for their own needs as well as their immediate family needs BUT those days are coming to an endWith more and more of us being employed by hospitals and other organizations we have to follow the guidelines mandated by the corporations. So although we do have some flexibility in not charging for a simple office visit we are not necessarily free to gift a surgery or in the case you suggested full Orthodontics to colleaguesWhen I started I NEVER paid a medical expense and the insurance paid and the rest was professional courtesy. Then the USPS stepped in and said that by not attempting to collect the copay and yet charging for the entire amount to the InsCos that was in deed mail fraud and was Federally criminalIn the recent though the places we refer to have come under significant restriction if the parties accept any federal money (meaning medicare Medicaid or the like) in a law called Stark. Stark tries to separate individuals from colluding together to keep money in one pot. An example is labs and radiology services. The law says that if the doctor making the referral is in any way associated with the lab or radiology center he/she must disclose that to the patient so the patient can opt to go elsewhere to have the services doneI have NEVER EVER had a patient who asked to go elsewhere in fact ASKED to go to the entity owned by the corporation so as to keep it simple with one billing system and one set of paperwork etcDo we recommend colleagues based on who refers to us? I guess we are human so there might be some allegiance to selected providers but most of us tend to refer to many different docs based on their own capability with the specifics of the patient’s needsWith more and more of us super limiting our practices what used to be a generalized “surgeon” might now be something like me a soft tissue ONLY head and neck surgeon. I don’t do ENT stuff I don’t do bony stuff I ONLY do soft tissue Oncology based stuff. If you have tonsils and adenoids I can refer you to good guys. If you need ear tubes ditto. If you need sinus surgery I have a book of guys if you have cancer of the roof of your mouth unless there is extensive soft tissue involvement I can’t help youSo more and more referrals are based on skills not buddy connections or moneyThanks for the A2A requestDr D
Kantian, Utilitarian, and Virtue ethics on organ donation?
The doctor should not share the results because it is illegal to share someone's medical information with anyone else. All he can do is try to persuade the father that his son is worth giving up a kidney for. Remember, you're not analyzing the father's ethics, but the specific act of the doctor illegally sharing medical test results in order to get family members to pressure the father into saving his son. Kantian ethics - The doctor should not break the privacy law because he cannot justify that it is always right to break this law. He must respect the father's wishes as much as his own. Utilitarianism - By sharing he might save the boy's life at the lesser expense of the father's free will. But meanwhile the doctor will be fired and sued for malpractice, so ultimately he will save fewer lives. Virtue ethics - I could argue either way on this one, because Virtue Ethics doesn't tell you how to act. Obeying laws is virtuous. Doing everything possible to save a life is virtuous. Stirring up marital discord is not virtuous.
My son needs a hip surgery for gangrene, but every referral has been returned?
Hello, It would be helpful to know a lot more detail, - is this gangrene in the bones, or in the joints, in the attached muscles, or in the overlying skin? What has caused the problem, do we know? Gangrene is a bad medical word, which usually implies not only that there is a lot of dead tissue, - but that this dead tissue is rotting away with infection (and that the rotting tissue is threatening the patient's life). Very nasty. If this word is being correctly applied in your son's case, then the surgical removal of the rotting tissue is urgent, - and only after the threat to his life has passed, is there any question of repairing or replacing what is left. I am trying to say that in my humble opinion, gangrene surgery is both urgent and life-saving, and entirely concerned with the complete removal of rotting, dead tissue. It seems incredible to me that my American surgical colleagues would turn down, such an urgent matter as you are describing. Frankly, in my opinion the removal of gangrenous tissue is not a highly specialist matter, - it is what faces general surgeons on the battlefield in wartime, every day. I am not sure how much "clout" we have on Yahoo, - and I hope you don't mind my saying so, but we would need a lot more detail before being convinced enough to try, - it just seems so unlikely on the face of it. Hope this helps, Best wishes, Belliger retired uk GP belliger@nym.hush.com
What are doctors going to be doing if real Artificial Intelligence exists?
They will adapt.Certain specialties are already using the pattern recognition and search capabilities of AI including dermatology, radiology, pathology and psychiatry. Not all doctors in these fields are using it, of course, as it is still not readily available, but in dermatology, for example, you can send a photo of a lesion and obtain a very accurate diagnosis and recommendations for treatment based on thousands of papers written about that lesion.While AI will help with diagnosis, it can’t make the kinds of judgements that doctors have to which involve the whole patient including life an death decisions, moral decisions and those many 50–50 or unknowable decisions that doctors have to make in spite of lack of evidence based medicine.The introduction of technology in medicine has had the result of more precise diagnosis, innovation in treatment and paradigm shifts in how we view disease. In many cases it has expanded a field or even started new ones.This is different from the effects of technology on many other fields (although finding new dierctions is not.) In agriculture, for example, what took 80 workers 150 years ago now can be done by two and a lot of equipment. Automation causes many jobs to be lost but also opens up new jobs. The problems with the new jobs is that they require more affinity to the new technology and more training. In medicine this has been the standard for a century.While there is a popular meme that doctors tend to be conservative, this does not hold with new technologies. Oh, there are doctors who are reluctant to use new methods, but the vast majority welcome anything that makes their job easier. So much so, that they often fail to see how these efficiencies can lead to burnout or lack of inquiry because technology seems infallible.AI will cause some shifting in the demographics of medicine but this is another “business as usual” for medicine. We no longer have specialists in venereal diseases, for example, and cardiology has expanded by a huge margin since I was in school in the 1960s. (I remember my teachers complaining about all the new technology then, but they used it.)Someone still has to make the decisions, someone will still have to do surgery, someone will still have to find the best uses of AI.The will adapt.
Is the modern neurosurgery potentially capable of improving specific abilities or talents?
This is not possible now or in the foreseeable future. To some extent we can detect where in the living brain certain activities reside, using techniques like functional MRI (fMRI), or even mapping at surgery with electrical stimulation. But how this brain activity translates into thoughts, feelings and abilities is not currently understood at a level that would permit surgical manipulation. It likely involves extremely complex neuronal networks and emergent properties of the functionality of those networks within an environment that also includes extracellular ionic regulation by glia and modulation by widely distributed systems such as serotonergic or dopaminergic neurons. We do have devices such as brainstem auditory implants or deep brain stimulators that can affect brain function, but these are basically crude switches that activate or block the function of large groups of neurons or the connections between them. They do not create abilities or talents.The OP gives an example of an injury that, through serendipity and by unknown mechanisms, appeared to “release” a suppressed talent or ability. I'm reminded of a slide talk I saw a few times at neurosurgical meetings—-I've unfortunately forgotten the presenter—-on the topic of movement disorder surgery. A patient with very severe tremor awoke one day with his left side tremor completely gone. A CT scan revealed he'd had a major hemorrhagic stroke in the right thalamus—-that by sheer luck interrupted the circuits causing his tremor and yet didn't paralyze or kill him. Thrilled, he asked the doctor if he could please fix the right side tremor the same way….umm, no.Augmentation with electronic devices that interface with the brain is a more likely way to acquire new “talents” in the near future, but ANY discussion of modifying people through brain surgery is fraught with complex medical and ethical issues that must be carefully considered.
Is it possible to keep a human brain alive without its body? If so, how long could it be kept living (if not forever)?
First of all, I have no idea how old this question is. I just woke up from a dream in which we were discussing in biology class a “live blob”, that is a brain which is kept alive outside of all connections to the rest of a body. That is how I found this question.Now I looked at the existing answers and they’re all excellent an informative. There are some references to Soviet experiments with dogs in the 40s and 50s, to Dr De Curtis’ work, to Dr Canavero’s attempted head transplant. The latest news say it’ imminent (A human head transplant would be reckless and ghastly. It’s time to talk about it.). In my dream, the discussion noted that the seat of consciousness took places in many organs or even muscles/nerves in different cultures (I believe the heart was a long time favorite in western cultures, which survives in our imagery for romances; but the liver was very important to the ancient Egyptians, etc.; more research would be needed and I’m just writing a Quora answer, so leaving it to the interested reader). Also in my dream, I imagined that the Nazis must have done it during WWII experiments, and the teacher confirmed that by saying they kept a coompound of brains alive to avoid being charged for murder (and also to keep scientists knowledge). Luckily for ethics, in my dream this was all destroyed and the ethical issues were avoided.But the technical questions at least are daunting, yet not impossible. Well, guess what? A quick Google search found this recent news: Pig brains kept alive outside their bodies and scientists are concerned humans might be next. So it looks totally feasible on the technical level. The questions now are to resolve the ethical issues around such an endeavour. Also note that the purpose of such a line of research is different, it is to grow tissues to help patients in need of critical brain services. As such, the goal is to grow conscious-free brain tissues. One way is to revive tissues after death, which is what they did with the pig.It doesn’t prevent science fiction from moving on, either in Frederick Pohl’s Gateway or Dennis Taylor’s Bobiverse (both of which are excellent). Also Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon, made into a sci-fi series on Amazon Prime touches on similar issues of consciousness outside a brain (in a cortical stack).