On the 26th of July in one of the large academic hospitals in Sydney, Australia a mistake by a doctor administering epidural for pain relief in labor resulted in a terrible accident. Instead of normal saline the anaesthetist filled the loss of resistance syringe with chlorhexidine in alcohol, the solution used for sterilizing the skin. As the result several milliliters of this substance were injected into the epidural space, causing sever damage to the neural structures. The patient is in a serious condition in the high care unit, and her symptoms are getting worse.
The media has been all over this, and I don't want to add the oil to the flames. The accident is certainly preventable, and the local health administration has issued a polici in an attempt to prevent such errors in the future.
It is unfortunate reality of clinical medicine that doctors' mistakes often lead to serious complications and even death. Will it ever be possible to eliminate errors completely? I do not believe so. However it is worthwhile to try, especially when we are talking about mistakes leading to such devastating outcomes as presented here.
Another unfortunate side effect of such errors is that it is easy to lose the perspective. Accidents like these are a feast fo the media, the sceptics and the proponents of the natural birth. The patients get scared too: the number of requests for epidural has fallen dramatically after the accident. In psychology it is called availability bias and it is quite common.
TO BE CONTINUED...
