Death By Tonsilectomy

As readers of this blog know, I have spent a fair amount of time over the past couple of years writing about the deteriorating state of medical care in the United states. Recently, a young black girl was pronounced brain dead after have undergone a simple tonsillectomy at the prestigious Children's Hospital in Oakland California. Unbelievable as it may sound, she simply bled to death postoperatively as her parents stood by her side pleading, in vain, for hospital personal to do something to stop the bleeding and save their daughter's life. To date, hospital officials have refused to comment on the specific events that led to this youngsters tragic death (sighting the dead girls right to privacy) other than to suggest that "These things just happen." Implying that, if a hospital performs enough of any surgical procedure, no matter how simple, someone eventually is going to die. If the inevitable malpractice suit is settled out of court (as most certainly will be the case) and the records are sealed, we may never know, as the late Paul Harvey would have said, the true story behind this senseless death. In any case, what the hospital bureaucrats say is true, at least to a point. Indeed, one in every 15,000 children who undergo a tonsillectomy dies from the procedure. It is quite another thing, however, to argue that a post-tonsillectomy death is inevitable and, thus, acceptable just because it is rare. This case stinks to high heaven of criminal malpractice and the hospital personal who stood by not lifting a finger, other than to provide a tonsil basin to collect the blood, to stop this poor youngsters post-operative bleeding should be tried, convicted, and sent to prison. The surgeon who failed to check on his patient after surgery should lose his medical license and be forced to spend 10 to 20 years in prison. May Rutherford, director of clinical quality at Children's, obviously, should be sacked! Understand, that it would have been one thing if the child had died in the operating room while the surgical team was frantically doing everything in their means to stop the bleeding. It is quite another for them to simply abandon her while she bled to death. In this respect, it is important to realize that this child would not died were it not for the utter incompetence of the entire staff that was charged with her care. The primary culprits include the surgeon who performed the tonsillectomy; the anesthesiologist who obviously did check on her closely enough postoperatively; and the nurses who, after surgery, stood by and watched her bleed to death, without lifting so much as a little finger. Amazing! To muddy up the waters even more, it is questionable that a tonsillectomy was even appropriate for a child who suffered only from a sleep disorder. What were these people thinking?