The Risks of Hospitalization

I came across an all too familiar topic this weekend, the risks related to being treated in a Hospital setting. This is something we are all a little familiar with. I have had patient’s tell me that they felt they needed to use a sharpie marker to denote the leg they were getting surgery on. In a simple manner they wrote “this one” and “not this one” on each knee in minimize the chances of having the wrong leg operated on. I always laugh a bit at that. However, it really isn’t a laughing matter. It can mean serious injury or loss of life.

I was still in college when my grandmother, I called her Mom Mom, was taken to the hospital early one weekend morning. I stayed home to watch my sister and my mother made the trip to pick her up and take her to the hospital. My Mom-Mom was an amazing woman. She was in her late 70’s and would cut and care for all of her neighbor’s lawns all through the spring and summer. She had amazing energy and was a volunteer at the elementary school (unpaid of course) and had been for over 18 years until that trip to the hospital.

The first news from my mother that day was that she had passed away while in the care of the hospital. What I later came to find out was that when she was admitted, they kept her waiting and didn’t treat her as an emergency cardiac patient (78 year old woman with chest pains, duh?). They treated her as if it was angina, a basically benign cardiac related condition that is usually self-limiting or treated with simple medications. Well as you can imagine, it wasn’t angina. My Mom-Mom died in a hospital bed without being treated as an acute cardiac case. She died of an MI, myocardial infarction. MI’s are routinely treated when identified properly and people often survive.

Every medical intervention carries a risk. Every decision not to have a medical intervention also carries with it a risk. I have made it a point to continue to educate myself about all things related to healthcare, whether it is about Chiropractic or not. It is about protecting our family for my wife and me.

Below are a few excerpts and links to some more information about this topic.
“The mistakes aren't exactly minor, either. Between 40,000 and 100,000 people die every year because of shoddy handiwork, including surgical mishaps and drug mix-ups. One big problem: Hospital patients may get the wrong drug one time out of five, according to a study by Auburn University. The death toll from mistakes is at least as bad as that from car accidents or breast cancer, and maybe as bad as that from strokes. Another 100,000 people die because of infections from hospital-bred bacteria that are resistant to one or more of the antibiotics doctors use to kill them off, according to the Center for Disease Control. Some of those might be prevented by more hand washing or other precautions.”
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100214300&page=1

There was a paper written by Gary Null and others that attempted to describe the impact that medical interventions had on the health of Americans. You may know Dr. Null from PBS where you can find him selling his products. He can be a bit controversial but worth reading.

“The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year. “ http://www.webdc.com/pdfs/deathbymedicine.pdf