M A R C H 2 0 1 9 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y. N E T • 6 3
I
was a kid when I first
learned about Will. He
was the brother I never
met. Will had been taken
from my parents before I
was born, when he was just 2
years old. One day, in 1966, he
went into surgery. It was supposed
to be routine: bilateral inguinal
hernia repair. But he never came
home. The doctors didn't have a
solid explanation for what hap-
pened. Something went irre-
versibly wrong. It might have been
a bad reaction to the anesthesia.
They just didn't know for sure.
That lack of clarity made Will's
sudden death even harder for my
parents to process. They'd not only lost their baby boy, but they didn't
even get an answer as to why. They'd finally get the beginnings of one,
though. More than 2 decades later.
The day of reckoning
My mom was having an anesthesia evaluation for a vein stripping pro-
cedure, and one of the routine questions was whether anyone in the
The MH in Me
As a surgeon who tested positive for susceptibility to
malignant hyperthermia, the potential for my patient and team
to experience a sudden MH crisis is never far from my mind.
Matthew Roberson, MD | Greenville, S.C.
• ALL IN THE MH FAMILY It took orthopedic surgeon
Matthew Roberson, MD, decades to learn that he lost his
brother to MH — and with that knowledge, he helped protect
his newborn son from a potential MH crisis.
Bon
Secours
St.
Francis
Health
System
