Talk about feeling crappy....

Two patients in surgical slip-up

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean doctors mistakenly removed part of the stomach of a patient due to have thyroid surgery, while removing the thyroid gland of another scheduled for stomach surgery, a hospital official said Monday.

The surgical mix-up took place at Konyang University Hospital in the city of Taejon, about 150 km (95 miles) south of Seoul and involved two women in their sixties who were both in for surgery the same day, hospital spokesman Kim Man-sik said.

Medical staff found out about the mix-up, which took place on December 29, only after they were filing paperwork on the two women, he said.

Doctors later performed the correct surgical procedures on both women and re-attached the part of the stomach they had removed from the patient with the thyroid problem, Kim said.

Both were recovering from their operations, he said.






I think maybe I'd have had the follow-up surgery at a different hospital. And what's with re-attaching the stomach? Do they routinely keep surgically-removed organs around?