Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Unnecessary Prostate Removal Surgery Proves The Folly Of "Evidence Based Medicine" Malpractice Immunity

"Evidence based medicine" is the newest shiny object on the mantle of the medical/insurance industry's never ending lobbying effort to eventually kill all medical malpractice lawsuits in this country. The premise: if doctors follow recognized guidelines or protocols in treating a patient, they should be immune from a lawsuit if the patient suffers medical harm.

Like other tort reform buzzwords such as "defensive medicine," it passes the "bumper sticker worthy" test, meaning it is overly simplistic and can be repeated over and over for maximum effect with an unsuspecting public and friendly lawmakers. But just how does "evidence based medicine immunity" square with the poor guy who had cancer surgery to remove his prostate when it turned out he didn't have cancer after all because his biopsy results got switched with another patient's?

This case was so secretive that the patient's name, the clinic, the lab, the doctors, and even the venue (the location where the malpractice and lawsuit took place) were confidential. But here's what happened to poor "George" as we'll call him.

After having a biopsy at a clinic to confirm or rule out prostate cancer, George's sample was sent to a pathology lab. Here's what happened after that:

The lab then determined the patient had prostate cancer and the patient underwent a robotic prostatectomy. But a sample taken from him after surgery showed he had no cancer at all. It was discovered that the original tissue sample had been switched with that of another patient who thought he was cancer-free. Exactly how the switch took place, however, was never cleared up.


After he sued both the clinic and the lab for wrongfully removing his prostate, things got more interesting in the lawsuit:



...both the clinic and the lab denied responsibility for the error. A nurse at the clinic insisted she labeled the sample correctly and followed protocol to make sure the requisition form matched the specimen. The pathologist at the lab reported matching the name on the requisition form with the name on the specimen, and lab technicians and pathologists followed all protocols during analysis.


Therein lies the problem with an "evidence based medicine" defense. How can everybody in the medical chain be following all protocols and this poor guy has unnecessary surgery for a non-cancerous prostate gland that's been removed as a result?

Evidence based medicine isn't so black and white after all when real world medical errors like this happen. At the end of the day, "best practices" and "protocols" are nothing more than aspirational pieces of paper. They're not worth squat if the team can't execute the playbook, and it's even worse when medical providers swear under oath that they followed the playbook, even in the face of an obvious medical mistake proving otherwise.

1 comment:

Tony Francis said...

What about res ipsa loquitur? This is the sort of thing that doesn't occur in the absence of negligence, the plaintiff had no contribution and no control over the situation. Control was completely in the hands of the potential defendants.

However, I wonder what the damages would be in a case like this?

But it seems there shouldn't be too much problem in identifying the culprit. The doctor who did the biopsy was responsible for correctly identifying it, as was the lab. So there are the defendants. Let them point the finger at each other.

And none of this is "EBM." There is no evidence in the medical literature which justifies mis-marking a sample, then taking out the wrong prostate, which just happened to be normal. It would be interesting to hear how this case turned out.