re: Woman says mother-in-law paralyzed after receiving potassium during surgery

I think they were injected with what some variation of what some lethal injection procedures use. It has other uses, but that's wild to think about.

My first thought went to mislabeling. I wonder, to another poster's question, if the substances are similar in color and viscosity.

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So the best qualified to be president of a hospital is a ??????????? I do wonder what his resume would tell us.

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I seriously doubt Ascension had some unqualified dumbass as CEO of their Midtown and West campuses in Nashville, one of their most important markets.

This is a big time job.

And hospital CEOs can't stop everything. This place has great quality scores and reputation.

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I'm officially worried as heck now, for an upcoming hip procedure.

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Now that this has gone viral you won't have anything to worry about. They'll be qunintuply checking everyting.

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I broke my tib/fib and separated my ankle

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louisianamotocross

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Name checks out.

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Was talking to one of my nurses about that and, unless it is different there, mislabeling would make no sense.

Bupivicaine comes in a bottle, potassium general comes in a bag.

I also can’t think of why you would even draw up potassium for this surgery.

It isn’t exactly the first med you go with if things are going wrong.

It doesn’t make sense.

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Good intel.

And yikes.

Mislabeling was also the most benign explanation.

Kind of? Doctors and nurses arent all as smart as they act.

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I also can’t think of why you would even draw up potassium for this surgery.

It isn’t exactly the first med you go with if things are going wrong.

It doesn’t make sense.

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It definitely sounds like some frickery is going on.

In situations like this would everyone who worked in that OR for those procedures be suspended from duties until they get to the bottom of it? It doesn't give you the warm and fuzzies if not.

Either the pharmacy mislabeled the medication, or the anesthiologist injected the wrong medication. I'm leaning towards it being a pharmacy error.

For this to have happened 4 times, tells me the pharmacy/hospital has no protocols in place to assure the right meds are used in surgical procedures.

Tennessee probably has tort reform laws that will limit hospital liability claims. It's in cases like this one where it has happened multiple times, that any limits on punitive damages should be lifted.

This hospital should be forced to close its doors after paralyzing 4 patients.

I can tell you with almost 100% certainty that it played out this way:

Spinal anesthesia has become the gold standard for total joint replacement, although it is often combined with a general anesthetic. A small dose of local anesthetic is injected into the intrathecal space. At our hospital this local anesthetic is taken from its original vial and placed into small syringes by the pharmacist/pharmacist tech so that an entire vial is not wasted on each patient.

Those syringes are then used for the spinal injection. With 99% certainty the pharmacist or pharmacy tech put the wrong medication into the syringe. The anesthesiologist placed spinal like he/she does every day. The syringe appeared to be the usual local anesthetic but has unfortunately been filled with potassium causing the spinal cord damage. In a busy hospital with a flip room, not out of reason that 4 patients could have gotten the spinals with the wrong medication before the first one reached the recovery room and they realized there was an issue.

And although some places are still using Bupivicaine which is ordinarily in the kit, most places have moved to Mepiviciane, which is shorter acting local anesthetic so patients are able to get up sooner after surgery and start walking. My guess is that when all the correct info comes out, it was suppose to be a mepivicaine spinal which is not the local anesthetic routinely provided in the kits and therefore the med came from the pharmacy