Doctor Improvises Medical Tool- Kills Patient

An idiot Doctor with a checkered past was allowed to operate in a Hawaiian hospital to perform spinal surgery. The doctor needed a titanium rod to help repair a fractured spine, but didn’t have one. Despite the fact that he could obtain the needed medical supplies in under 90 minutes, the Doctor tried to pull a “MacGyver.” He tried to make a substitute rod by sawing the shaft off of a stainless steel screwdriver and using it place of the medical titanium rod.

Long story short- The improvised shaft broke, and three subsequent surgeries that were needed to fix the error contributed to the death of the patient.

The above xray shows the broken screwdriver shaft that was used in place of surgical titanium as required for this type of operation

Thanks to my sister-in-law for pointing out this story.
From the Star Bulletin here, here and here.

A Big Island jury yesterday awarded damages of nearly $5.6 million in a lawsuit against a surgeon who placed a piece of a screwdriver in the back of one of his patients.

The jury found surgeon Robert Ricketson 65 percent responsible for medical problems suffered by patient Arturo Iturralde, and Hilo Medical Center 35 percent responsible for allowing Ricketson to practice medicine there despite a questionable background.

Two hours into an operation on Iturralde on Jan. 29, 2001, Ricketson and operating room personnel discovered that the titanium rods were missing. Despite a nurse vigorously warning him, Ricketson improvised a new rod by cutting the shaft of a stainless steel, medical screwdriver.

He did so even though a representative of Medtronic, contacted by telephone in Honolulu, said he could bring another set of titanium rods to Hilo Medical Center in 90 minutes.

This means that, had the medical TEAM (I include the nurses in on this since they are on the team), had performed a proper inventory of the necessary medical materials prior to beginning surgery, the whole sad affair could have been prevented.

Ricketson told the 11-woman, one-man jury that Iturralde had lost too much blood early in the operation, and Ricketson could not risk extending the operation to wait for the new rods.

A week later, the piece of screwdriver broke, requiring another operation. Yet another followed after that, and Iturralde deteriorated until dying in 2003 at age 75.

Ricketson had not even bought malpractice insurance and had to serve as his own attorney.

You know, I’m not allowed to drive a car in my state without proper insurance. There are states that allow you to saw into the flesh of a living being without insurance??!!

Yeah, the patient was old, but that is no reason to treat him like a second class citizen. After the Doctor munged the operation, he fled to the mainland and tried to get a new job in Oklahoma, but was denied. See these details:

The 1987 graduate from the medical school at the University of Oklahoma practiced in San Antonio and Edmond, Okla., before moving to Hilo in July 1998, according to Texas State Board of Medical Examiners files.

Ricketson left Hawaii sometime in late 2001 or 2002 and applied for a medical license in Kansas in late 2002. The Kansas State Board of Healing Arts reviewed his record and on Dec. 14, 2002, recommended he withdraw his application, according to Kansas board documents. Ricketson withdrew.

The lawsuit alleges Ricketson never told the patient or his family of the screwdriver substitution. The suit also alleges that Ricketson was addicted to painkillers and even stole them from his patients.

Before Iturralde was ever wheeled into Ricketson’s operating room, the surgeon had had at least seven medical malpractice suits filed against him, and his medical license had already been suspended in Oklahoma, revoked in Texas and was being reviewed in Hawaii, according to medical board documents from three states.

In one of the malpractice suits, an Oklahoma woman was awarded $1.3 million after she went to Ricketson for a ruptured disc in her back. Her lawsuit alleges he was under the influence of narcotics during her operation.

Ricketson admitted in court documents for the case that he “had severed eight or nine nerves and that he could not adequately express how sorry he was.” The woman now wears a diaper and walks only with a walker.

Documents from medical boards in Oklahoma and Texas say Ricketson had become addicted to narcotics because he was self-treating chronic back pain. The documents said he wrote fake prescriptions for the drugs and even stole them from his patients.

In 1998 an Atlanta rehabilitation center recommended Ricketson for treatment for narcotics addiction, but instead of undergoing the treatment, Ricketson “returned to his medical practice in Hawaii,” according to the Oklahoma files.

More about the operation and the man’s condition:

During the screwdriver operation, a nurse shouted, “Dr. Ricketson, you cannot do this,” Davis said.

When the broken screwdriver piece was removed later, nurses saved the pieces and gave them to Hilo attorney Robert Marx, who is co-counsel with Davis.

Patient Iturralde, 73, was 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighed 235 pounds. He had had heart surgery, suffered from diabetes and urinary incontinence and various falls, Davis said.

The botched screwdriver surgery, followed by three corrective surgeries, injured Iturralde’s nerves, causing inability to walk and further urinary complications that led to infections and his death, Davis said.

Although this is all a civil suit, the Attorney General of Hawaii should take a look to see if there was any criminal negligence on the part of the hospital too, which was shielded from wrongdoing by state law.