ST. LOUIS Severe mistakes happen, even at hospitals that receive high marks from federal health officials. And consumers usually never learn the details of these errors. <\/p>\n
In a very small percentage of surgeries, doctors operate on the wrong knee or breast, and in rare cases amputate the wrong body part. <\/p>\n
But when a neurosurgeon operates on the wrong side of a persons brain, as happened last month at an SSM Health Care hospital in the St. Louis area, it is a unique event and a medical mistake of the highest order. <\/p>\n
A wrong-site surgery on the brain of which only about one a year has been documented since the mid-1960s can rob a person of cognition, emotional strength and ability to interact with others, as well as traumatize and scar a patients family, caregivers and the medical professionals who made the error. <\/p>\n
According to national experts, it is usually a signal that the institutions quality control processes systems that are designed to safeguard the lives and limbs of patients are insufficient. <\/p>\n
In a public apology issued Tuesday, Chris Howard, president and chief executive of SSM Health Care-St. Louis, admitted that one of the health systems neurosurgeons operated on the wrong side of a 53-year-old womans skull and brain. <\/p>\n
This was a breakdown in our procedures, and it absolutely should never have happened, he said. <\/p>\n
The case of Regina Turner, a former paralegal who lived in St. Ann, is a significant crisis for not only St. Clare Health Center in Fenton, where the brain surgery took place on April 4, but also for Creve Coeur-based SSM Health Care, a Catholic nonprofit health system that runs 18 hospitals in Missouri and three other states. <\/p>\n
The case also points to weaknesses in federal and Missouri law that leave patients as consumers with a limited view of hospital performance. Unless litigation about a hospital error is reported by news media, Missourians rarely learn about these surgical mistakes. And without this data, consumers have less information to help them make choices about medical care. <\/p>\n
Missouri is among the minority of states that do not require hospitals to report serious errors and also among those states that do not operate a public database of information about these occurrences. Such events normally remain hidden from public scrutiny. <\/p>\n
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Botched brain surgery prompts extensive review at SSM Health Care<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ST. LOUIS Severe mistakes happen, even at hospitals that receive high marks from federal health officials. And consumers usually never learn the details of these errors Continue reading