Docs Attach Patient's Intestine To Her Vagina--And Get Case Tossed!

I'm sure we all remember that childhood anatomy song, a snippet of which goes something like "well, the hip bone's connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone's connected to the________" and so on and so on.


Recently, two surgeons in North Carolina mistakenly attached a woman's intestine to her vagina during a hysterectomy. As the song goes, the intestine is connected to the rectum, not the vagina. Or at least that's how the song SHOULD have been sung.

Needless to say, the patient, probably also familiar with that tune, sued the surgeons for medical negligence (also known as medical malpractice) for the botched surgery. You can read about it here.

Now here's where it gets weird. The trial judge actually threw out the case!! Why? Apparently, the patient's attorneys filed the lawsuit without a medical expert giving the opinion that a woman's intestines should not be attached to her vagina under any circumstances.

The surgeons' attorney apparently argued that, hey, this is a malpractice case and you need an expert to say that it's not OK to suture an intestine to a vagina, and since you don't have an expert, case dismissed.

And apparently the judge agreed, tossing the case. As you might expect, this one got appealed, and, thankfully, common sense re-entered the picture. The Court Of Appeals, perhaps aware of the words of Bob Dylan that "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows," adroitly noted that it’s "common knowledge and experience that intestines are meant to connect with the anus, not the vagina, even following a surgical procedure to correct a bowel problem."

But here’s the real teaching point about the difficulties, complexities, and unfairness of our medical malpractice laws. There are certain results in medicine that are just inherently wrong and preventable: the clamp left in the abdomen, the sponge or towel left under the lung, operating on the wrong limb, removing a non-cancerous breast by mistake. The list goes on, and I think it’s safe to add attaching intestines to a woman’s vagina to that list.

Yet, this case got thrown out and had to be appealed to be re-instated. Point? Many of our “tort reform” malpractice laws bend over backwards to make it increasingly more difficult for legitimate cases to make it through the legal system.

And if any medical person would respond by saying, “well, not so fast, these things can and do happen,” my response is I’m waiting for the scholarly medical article that touts the benefits or efficacy of attaching intestines to vaginas. Waiting patiently….right next to Linus in the pumpkin patch….