{"id":20535,"date":"2021-12-02T07:29:57","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T12:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=20535"},"modified":"2021-12-02T07:29:57","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T12:29:57","slug":"austria-doctor-fined-for-amputating-wrong-leg-of-patient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2021\/12\/02\/austria-doctor-fined-for-amputating-wrong-leg-of-patient\/","title":{"rendered":"Austria: Doctor fined for amputating wrong leg of patient"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A surgeon in Austria has been fined after amputating the wrong leg of a patient earlier this year.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The elderly patient’s right leg was removed instead of his left, with the mistake only discovered two days later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On Wednesday, the court in Linz found the 43-year-old guilty of gross negligence and fined her \u20ac2,700 (\u00a32,296).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The widow of the patient, who died before the case came to court, was also awarded \u20ac5,000 in damages.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The patient attended the clinic in Freistadt last May to have his leg amputated but the surgeon marked the wrong limb for amputation, AFP news agency reports.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The mistake was identified during a routine bandage change and the patient was told he would have to have his other leg amputated as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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At the time, the hospital said the incident had occurred as a “result of a sequence of unfortunate circumstances”. Its director made a public apology at a news conference.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In court, the surgeon said there had been a flaw in the chain of command in the operating theatre.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When asked why she had marked the right leg and not the left,\u00a0she said: “I just don’t know”.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Since the incident, she has moved to another clinic. Half of her fine has been suspended.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Cases like these are rare but there have been similar incidents in the past.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In 1995, a doctor in the US discovered halfway through surgery that he was amputating the wrong leg of a diabetic patient. He was\u00a0forced to continue after cutting through muscles, tendons and ligaments<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A surgeon in Austria has been fined after amputating the wrong leg of a patient earlier this year. The elderly patient’s right leg was removed instead of his left, with the mistake only discovered two […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[3764,1256,8194,8193,5155],"class_list":{"0":"post-20535","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-world","9":"tag-amputation","10":"tag-austria","11":"tag-gross-negligence","12":"tag-linz","13":"tag-surgery","14":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20535"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20538,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20535\/revisions\/20538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}