A woman surgeon who amputated the wrong leg on an 82-year-old patient has been given a GBP 2,300-fine.
The 82-year-old man had his wrong leg amputated by surgeons in the Freistadt Hospital located in the town of Freistadt in the Austrian state of Upper Austria on 18th May.
As a result of the mistake, the OAP lost both his legs, as another operation was required to amputate the leg that was initially supposed to be removed.
The long-serving woman surgeon who carried out the operation that led to the man losing the wrong leg faced trial for ‘grossly negligent bodily harm under particularly dangerous circumstances’ on 1st December.
The severely diabetic elderly man had died in a nursing home following the operation.
The medical mishap was discovered by nurses two days after the operation when they were carrying out a routine bandage change.
It was later revealed that the error occurred shortly before the operation because surgeons marked up the wrong limb before heading to the OR.
Dr Norbert Fritsch, director of the Freistadt Hospital, said in a press conference that “a chain of unfortunate circumstances” was the reason behind the error on Thursday 20th May.
He added: “We are deeply affected. As far as we know, the mix-up happened shortly before the operation before the wrong leg was marked.”
The lawyer for the defence underlined that the “terrible mistake” was not due to an “individual failure” on the part of his client, the 43-year-old female surgeon, but because the control system did not work.
The surgeon said: “I knew I had to amputate the left leg.” When asked why she still marked the right leg before the operation, she said several times: “I just don’t know.”
Speaking about the analysis of the incident, the defendant said: “There were errors in the planning of the surgery, as no page numbers were given in the patient file, which is why a review was not possible.”
During the hearing, the 43-year-old surgeon admitted to having “made a mistake”, but denied “gross negligence”. She spoke of “human error” instead.
A so-called team time-out, the last security measure that an operating team must observe before a surgery, did not work either. The patient was identified and the location of the operation on their body was repeated and confirmed, which is what should have happened anyway, but nobody noticed that the markings were on the wrong leg.
The surgeon said that the “team time-out” stage is now being taken more seriously.
