[ScottBurson]

There's an interesting summary of the debate about this study on Medscape [0].

Failing to tell a patient that strenuous exercise might be fatal sounds like an error to me!

As it happens, my maternal grandmother was killed by a medical error (before I was born). She went in for some kind of routine surgery and didn't make it. Decades later, when the doctor involved died, among his effects were found a letter he had written to another doctor, explaining that he had made a stupid mistake that killed her. (I don't know any more details.)

Does that mean I believe the "#3 killer" claim? Not necessarily. But I'd bet that the problem is worse than most medical professionals would expect, and that there remains considerable room for improvement.

[0] http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/863788

[eruditely]

tell us more about your grandmother's story.

[ScottBurson]

I don't know anything else about it, except I can add that it would have been about 1952, in Alabama.

[internaut]

Ack, I thought you were talking to me. Sorry!

[internaut]

It happened with my father's birth I think. He was the oldest of seven children like typical Catholic families of the time. As a child I knew she walked kind of funny but I put it down to her being an old lady (she wasn't but to a child's eyes it's different). As with something you're familiar with you don't question it. Later my father joined a cult and developed an acrimonious relationship with my grandfather who believed the cult was trying to steal his property and so he disinherited my father. We moved away while I was still very young and so I didn't see my grandmother for a time. In my late teens my father and grandfather became more friendly and we visited occasionally.

My grandmother was becoming ill, first diabetes, then Alzheimers. Around this time I learned from my mother than the doctors in the Bons (as we called the Cork Hospital) had performed a Symphysiotomy. My mother described it as a butcher shop involving hacking and sawing. I think a radio show prompted her outburst on the topic, although she and my grandmother didn't get along she obviously felt deep revulsion about the affair. As with most of the women I don't think they asked for permission, they just wheeled them into surgery. I think what galled my grandparents the most is that they perceived the Bons to be a much superior hospital to all the others. It was private. It had reputable doctors. It was Catholic. They were farmers so this would have been a considered expense for them. I'm confident they didn't want to talk about it, it was probably too much.

In this diagram on the wiki you can see what happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphysiotomy#/media/File:Skel...

The part marked '5' was severed using something like a wood saw or circular saw. Saying they broke the pelvis isn't an exaggeration.

The accounts from the wiki are grotesque. Catherine McKeever, a private patient at the Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda in 1969, told the Committee that she did not realise what had happened: 'I saw him [the doctor] with an instrument which I thought was a bit brace because my father was a wood turner. I felt a crack … Nobody answered me or said anything'. Margaret Conlan, who was operated upon in 1962 in St Finbarr's Hospital, Cork, testified that she had never been told anything about it: 'My baby’s head was perforated and the baby died… I did not find out [about the symphysiotomy] until I read it in the newspaper'.

It seems the practice was done to encourage more children. I'm not familiar with Catholic dogma so I don't understand why doctors would foist on their patients. Today I wonder today how the Muslim and African doctors are getting away with FGM in Irish and English hospitals, so in a way the barbarism continues. Don't trust religious fanatics or doctors and especially not both.

The problem is that they both tend to come well dressed and respected by their communities. Taking them down makes you the bad guy, not them.

[internaut]

> Does that mean I believe the "#3 killer" claim? Not necessarily. But I'd bet that the problem is worse than most medical professionals would expect, and that there remains considerable room for improvement.

Yes exactly, that's my position.

I feel that doctors are overworked generally, don't sleep very much so it's not surprising they don't have the time for introspection on this subject. The error rate is probably largely caused by economic factors like the perpetual labour shortage (in Ireland/UK at least).

On a personal level my grandmother had her pelvis snapped by doctors.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/irish-woman-awarded-600000-...

In my own experience with a (not life threatening) medical procedure I went to three different doctors asking for help. None was given. They ignored my requests for analysis and a solution. I didn't even know what was wrong.

Finally I went online, found out what the problem was about, found out what the solution could be for it, and then I literally took a flight to England to get an experienced medical practitioner to sort it out which he did very professionally for a reasonable fee.

After this I complained to the medical ombudsman. Only then did they get into a flutter after literally years of waiting for them to solve the problem. A solution was provided that I no longer needed and I told them so. In fact I had already told them so but they weren't paying much attention. Pretty sure I could have sued them into the ground for malpractice.

I work with a coworker who broke his ankle falling down from a ladder. A horrible injury that shattered. That didn't even turn out to be the real problem though because after going into the hospital a doctor didn't wash his hands, and put them into the wound, infecting it with MRSA. My coworker who was awake, literally asked him to wash his hands right there and the doctor said "No, it's Ok".

I'm just one guy in his twenties and I can think of 3 cases like this. That is not good!

Lastly on an optimistic note my uncle fell off a roof he was working on with roof tiling. He fell two stories and behind him a trolley containing roof tiles slipped down and onto his back, almost snapping his spine in two.

The doctors fixed him up with steel plates, taking them out years later. Now he walks around like nothing happened (still on roofs!) but it's an amazing feat of medical attention to detail that this is true given his spinal column was almost severed.