[dandelany]

Based on the details in both articles, this seems like a mischaracterization. The issue is not the fact that he died after an inherently risky operation - it's that the doctors (allegedly) made mistakes afterward that unnecessarily increased the risk and potentially cost him his life.

"Do patients always die if wire removal causes bleeding? No — it is very rare, surgeons said. Patients should be rushed to the operating room ... But Mr. Armstrong was taken to a cardiac catheterization lab first, before he went to surgery. The cath lab, Dr. Haft said, 'is not the solution.' ... By the time Mr. Armstrong got to the operating room, his heart had stopped and he had brain damage from a lack of blood to his brain. He died without regaining consciousness."

"The expert reviews focus on the hospital’s decision to bring Mr. Armstrong to a catheterization lab rather than directly to an operating room when he began to experience complications. 'The decision to go to the cath lab was THE major error,' Dr. Joseph Bavaria, a vice-chair of cardiothoracic surgery at University of Pennsylvania wrote in a review conducted at the request of the Armstrong family."