- cross-posted to:
- andfinally@feddit.uk
- cross-posted to:
- andfinally@feddit.uk
An Austrian surgeon allegedly let his teenage daughter drill a hole in a patient’s skull.
Following a forestry accident in January, a 33-year-old man was flown by air ambulance to Graz University Hospital, Styria, southeastern Austria, with serious head injuries, according to Kronen Zeitung, an Austrian newspaper.
He needed emergency surgery, but the doctor allegedly let his 13-year-old daughter take part in operating on him.
The newspaper reported that she even drilled a hole in the patient’s skull.
While the operation was said to have gone off without issue, the patient is still unable to work and investigations by the Graz public prosecutor’s officer against the entire surgical team are continuing.
It wasn’t until April that an anonymous complaint was logged to the public prosecutor’s office about the allegations, the newspaper reported.
The alleged victim initially learned about the case in the media before later being told by authorities he was a witness in an investigation.
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Jfc, having the girl in the room at all is a liability, let alone letting her touch the patient.
I hope this guy’s malpractice lawyer has good heart meds.
Damn bro, women can be surgeons too. It’s not 1890 anymore.
Women can indeed. Not so sure about 13 year old girls.
In all fairness, I think it was a joke.
So many people not getting that lol
Sarcasm doesn’t translate well amongst strangers via text, it’s why we’ve got shortcuts like “/s” everyone should use
Didn’t you watch Doogie Howser?
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No one said any different. Read again.
13 year old girls aren’t qualified brain surgeons any more than 13 year old boys
Congratulations, that’s the joke.
In the US (the most sue happy place on earth) the guy probably wouldn’t get a payout.
At least from reading the article, it infers the surgery and everything done went off without any issues. In the US, if you want to sue and win, you have to show that damages were done to you.
So while it was wildly inappropriate to have a 13 year old there or touching a patient at all, the patient would need to show that it caused damages.
I’m no lawyer but I think drilling into someone’s head without permission might still count as assault.
But the surgery wasn’t assault.
Do you think the patient gave informed consent, where the information included the fact that the surgical team would include untrained people?
No, but there was still no damages. I don’t know about Austria, but in the US it has to be shown that damages were suffered.
Without informed consent a surgery is assault though
Emergency surgery or transport to a hospital from a patient such as this falls under implied consent. The patient got in a near fatal accident. He didn’t schedule a knee surgery or something.
I dont get how the surgeon thought this was okay. When I have a regular check up I have to give permission for a student doctor to simply sit in on my appointment.
Having a 13 year old drill a hole in your head is waaay beyond that. I hope that doctor has their liscence revoked. They clearly don’t give a single fuck about their patients.
Don’t surgeries usually have other assistants in the OR as well? Nobody was like “uh, hell no” to this guy bringing a child in and then letting her drill a hole in someone?
Plenty of other people in there, my ex-wife was a scrub, did nothing but OR. But you do not cross a surgeon, and especially not in his domain. Hence the anonymous complaint that kicked this off.
Always say yes to the student doctors and nurses, proud to do my part, but I damned near made a nurse cry one day. LOL, she was wrecked.
I was in the hospital, think they were changing my IV to the other arm? Anyway, that was the sort of thing she was trying to stick me for. This poor woman couldn’t nail a vein after SIX tries, gave up utterly humiliated. She keep poking and missing and apologizing, poking and missing and apologizing, getting more flustered each time. I was cold stoned on opiates, thought it was rather amusing, though the pain was getting a little annoying. Still, kept telling her it was cool, she’s there to learn and I was happy to help.
They bring another nurse in and he had to make two passes. Y’all, you can clearly see my forearm veins. Maybe I was a little dehydrated or something to do with the drugs?
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My understanding is that the drill is fixtured in position in procedures as delicate as this, so that it really can’t move and drill anywhere except where it needs to. Likely why Dad thought (wrongly) that it was harmless.
I was thinking this as well. Headlines, no matter the story, are frequently meant to rage bait people.
Is it pretty messed up? Yeah, I’d say that meets the definition. Was the guy actually in danger? Idk? I’m not a rocket scientist.
Edit: Side note, I just saw a “cranial fixation system” for the first time where I work about a week ago. I do not work in a medical field so this is just a really strange coincidence. I won’t be elaborating on my career.
Was the guy in any danger?
He was receiving emergency brain surgery.
It likely was harmless, since the article infers ther surgery went well. It was just inappropriate and looks bad. When suing in the US you have to show damages. The patient may have a hard time winning his case.
Which part of the US 🇺🇸 is Austria 🇦🇹 in?
Missouri. The capital is Vienna.
I wasn’t inferring this was a US case. But a lot of law isn’t very dissimilar in most countries, so just taking a guess I would assume you’d have to show damages in Austria, as well.
I think that’s an entirely wrong starting point. Operating on a person without their informed consent is bodily harm. You have to prove the patient agreed. (Ignoring for the moment situations where they can’t.)
The patient never agreed to a surgery in part performed by that kid, but to one performed entirely by trained professionals.
But there was no bodily harm. If the procedure had failed or an infection happened there would be, but from the light bit of info in the article, the procedure was successful. No damages incurred due to the 13 year olds involvement.
But there was no bodily harm.
Opening up the patient - by itself - is bodily harm (“Körperverletzung”) already. It is only legal in the context of consent, and that consent only carries any weight if it was informed. Even if nothing goes wrong and no damages occur the lack of informed consent makes the act illegal.
This is probably https://gesetzefinden.at/bundesrecht/bundesgesetze/stgb/para-83 by the child, who is too young to be tried or punished, but should be https://gesetzefinden.at/bundesrecht/bundesgesetze/stgb/para-282 by the mother.
Maybe https://gesetzefinden.at/bundesrecht/bundesgesetze/stgb/para-110 is also relevant, if we assume the deficient consent also has consequences for the other medical treatment that occured from other people in the room.
Life saving emergencies constitute implied consent. It doesn’t actually need to be given beforehand if it’s to save/help someone who can’t currently make a choice.
Okay, sorry, I didn’t realize this wasn’t a scheduled surgery, I only read the German article from the comments.
Yes there is the concept of implied consent for those cases where a patient can’t make his will known. But in those cases you have to act along the presumed will of the patient. That will of the patient would regularily be presumed to contain the lege artis, at least in a setting where the hospital has been reached already and the option was available. So that again precludes untrained people participating in my view.
The last time I remember children being invited to a high-intensity workplace ended up with them fatally crashing an airplane with 75 people on board.
Whilst this is absolutely true, I think it’s more constructive to focus on the failure in design that led to the confusion in the cockpit.
There is no doubt that children in the cockpit contributed to the incident, but that incident could have happened with some other distraction.
The failure for the aircraft to correctly notify the pilot of the change in autopilot configuration was clearly very dangerous.
Agreed. “Mistakes were made - but let’s blame the dumb dad who had his moron 15-year-old progeny bump the autopilot into total submission.” smh
But think of the shareholders, they could have been the real victims /s
These are the policies of take-your-daughter-to-work day. The doctor’s hands were tied.
I feel like there was something like this in one of the Naked Gun movies. If not, there should’ve been.
I missed this in the news, then saw link refers to Kronen Zeitung report which is not a great newspaper to cite so thought for sure it cannot be entirely true? But it is! And here another link from Die Presse (google translate works fine here) which tells us it was not a jerk dad who brought his kid to drill holes but an idiot mom.
Bring your kid to work day?
When the hands on experience goes too far
Yo did she do a good job tho?
The article said the operation was completed without issue, so sounds good to me.
It said “the operation was said to have gone off without issue, the patient is still unable to work”. Who is saying it didn’t have issues though? If the patient still isn’t able to work, it sounds potentially like there may have potentially been issues. It may have actually not had issues, but I’m not taking the surgeon or hospital’s word for it, assuming it is them who said this.
Did she get paid?
Or is this yet another case of a minor being exploited for unpaid labor.
She’s a goddamn hero who saved a man’s LIFE and her father’s CAREER after he was tired and emotional at work and could not keep his hands steady enough to perform brain surgery
I mean we called this an apprenticeship for a thousand years or so, right?
I don’t understand either if this is even a problem.
Allowing a literal child with 0 medical training/education to drill into/near a vital organ of someone experiencing an acute head injury while they are unconscious and without their consent? Naw, nothing wrong there at all.
Y’all just jealous she’s a brain surgeon with a 100% survival rate at 13.
Well, I’m not a brain surgeon. So, I don’t take myself as qualified to make that risk assessment. I agree that all you said up to ‘without consent’ is a very reasonable starting point to think about it, the answer to it should be made by whomever is qualified to answer it.
As for consent, no pacirnt gives direct consent to who’s in/helping the surgery besides the head surgeon. Why do you claim its need in this case?
There is a trauma surgeon in the article stating she shouldn’t have even been allowed in the room, let alone allowed to drill into a patient’s skull.
Is it less ethical or more ethical if the patient had given informed consent?
No patient gives consent to who is helping in the surgery because there is an implicit understanding that it will only be performed by qualified licensed personnel. There are multiple regulating bodies that prevent unqualified people from practicing in a professional setting. So, it is not unreasonable to make this assumption.
My argument is that it would be one thing if this was a simple superficial elective surgery where the patient consented to allowing the doctor’s unqualified child “to give it a go” popping a pimple or something. It is significantly worse because it was a life-threatening emergency procedure where the doctor elected to increase the likelihood of failure/harm/death while the patient was in a position where they couldn’t consent to the doctor taking that unnecessary risk.
Thanks for the thoughtful answer!
I also lack basic judgment, and have no idea if there was a problem here
I too like to partake into cynical sarcastic self loathing , at times.
And I do like the layered ambiguity to whom your comment is addressed.
Sounds like you’ve had brain surgery by a 13 year old.
Sounds like you just want an snswer.
There’s a reason we call neurosurgery the arts and crafts department.
I’m confused why she was there in the first place
Lucky, I didn’t get to drill holes during take your kid to work day
If your father was a porn star, then this was a good call.
