Iatrogenic disease - part 4

This is a topic that just keeps giving. This morning's haul is an article in the National Post, entitled "Inside Canada’s secret world of medical error: ‘There is a lot of lying, there’s a lot of cover-up’." It was published in January, but I just ran across it. It begins with a story containing a shocking verbal image: a woman whose eyeball literally pops out her eye socket because botched eye surgery caused a build-up of blood behind her eye. The same woman had a few months earlier mistakenly received a hernia operation instead of having a cyst removed from one of her ovaries. She is in continuing pain from the unremoved cyst and she now has a prosthetic eye.

The article continues with a litany of other hospital errors before citing a frightening statistic: 13% of people coming into hospital in Canada will experience some kind of adverse event, and that includes the possibility of iatrogenic death. A 2004 study showed that 7.5% of adult patients entering hospital, or approximately 185,000 Canadians a year, experienced a serious adverse event. The percentage for children was higher at 9.2%. Up to 23,000 people a year die in Canada as a result of preventable hospital error. According to Hugh McLeod, chief executive of the Canadian Safety Institute, "With the pace, the increase of new technology, new drugs, new approaches … the probability of risk and incident has grown."

If you have a strong stomach, read the article in its entirety. It will inspire you to do everything in your power to stay out of hospital.