INTERNAL BLEEDING

THE TRUTH BEHIND AMERICA'S TERRIFYING EPIDEMIC OF MEDICAL MISTAKES BY ROBERT M. WACHER, M.D.
KAVEH G. SHOJANIA, M.D.


EACH YEAR doctors and nurses kill nearly one hundred thousand Americans by mistake. They operate on the wrong patients, prescribe the wrong drugs, and leave intruments inside body cavities after surgery. Meanwhile, hospital spend billions on new gadgets, marble lobbies, and slick billboards, even as safety continues to be ignore.

Everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Died of complications after gallbladder surgery.

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm. Florence Nightingale Notes on Hospitals, 1859

Experts estimate that as many as 98,000 people die in any given year from medical errors that occur in hospital. That's more that die from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer, or aids--- Three cause that receive far more public attention...

Research by Darthmouth's Jack Wennberg showed that a patient's chance or receiving a cardiac by-pass operation or back surgery, or a woman's chance of having a C-section (Cesarian delivery) during childbirth, varied by up to a factor of ten depending on where the lived.

Tens of thousands of lives were lost annually because high-risk surgeries were performed in hospital that had inadequate experience with the specific procedure.

If People took the time to read Consumer reports before buying a refrigerator or car, he reasoned, wouldn't they want to know the postoperative complications and mortality rates of competing doctors and hospitals?

First Alternative Chiropractic©

October 11, 2004