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Wrong-eye surgery
You'd think the blatant arrow above the correct eye would have indi-
cated which eye should have been blocked. "You'd think," says Dr.
Hoffman. "It was just a real boneheaded move."
He's referring to the time a nurse anesthetist injected local anesthet-
ic around the wrong eye, even though it was properly marked.
Luckily, the mistake was caught before surgery began, by one of the
triple-checks employed by Dr. Hoffman' surgical team: The nurse
anesthetist marks the correct eye before placing the block (oops!), Dr.
Hoffman signs an "H" above the intended eye, and the team confirms
the correct procedure and site with the patient and against the surgi-
cal schedule during the pre-op time out.
As Dr. Hoffman's near-miss shows, marking the right eye isn't 100%
fail-safe, but having a multilayered plan in place to check and confirm
the correct site will likely prevent a devastating conclusion to what
should be a routine procedure. OSM
E-mail
dcook @outpatientsurg ery.net
.
O P H T H A L M O L O G Y
