Man Loses Top of Head in Surgery
- photo via Mind Hacks
Doctors stored the top of a man’s head in a defective refrigerator while they operated on his brain. When they realized the cold storage was not cold, they were forced to discard the real cranial material and fit him with a plastic prosthesis instead. The financial damages you can expect to get for surgeons spoiling your skull cap? Four grand and change. According to the ruling court, that’s a generous sum, because the plastic cover is even better than a real skull.
Cranial prosthetics are pretty incredible, actually. I don’t know about better, but definitely impressive…
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POSTED IN: Healthcare, Misc., Oddities, Surgery
7 opinions for Man Loses Top of Head in Surgery
psioni
Aug 30, 2007 at 10:22 am
The best of this story- they only gave him 4,200$ in compensation, the reason being, the new part of the skull they gave him was better than the part they lost!
Ross James
Aug 30, 2007 at 10:37 am
Wow, Sara, I guess it shows how important it is to not lose your head in some situations.
Sara
Aug 30, 2007 at 1:43 pm
He wanted 20 but the court felt that was excessive. :)
Jennifer
Aug 30, 2007 at 2:52 pm
That’s funny; that’s one reason (among many same style reasons) that I quit hospital style medicine. I was at an operation for a fellow who had a, man I can’t remember something like a tumor issue but they had to go through the top of his skull. They were allowing an assist by a res, and he nicked a tiny vein, I believe a vein, and blood just flooded the inside of this guys head which of course made it impossible to find the actual vein to fix — long story short it took a while to clean up the mess and that is one of the lessor bad things I saw doctors do in the hospital.
Some of the things I’ve seen make home surgery and care start to look pretty darn good. Although I’m not saying that’s an official recommendation.
Jennifer
Aug 30, 2007 at 2:53 pm
“lessor bad things” obviously I should quit writing as well. Hmmm, what career should I do?
Sara
Aug 30, 2007 at 7:46 pm
lol…Jennifer, I think we’ve all had those days ;)
alicia
Aug 31, 2007 at 4:31 am
Wow, I don’t know what to think of this! If the plastic is better, well, great. But that doesn’t mean he wanted it. If I were him, I probably would have pushed for more, even after the initial court decision. Regardless of how great the new skull top is, it wasn’t his decision.
Actually, I would like to know what action was taken before they “installed” (haha) the new skull top. Did they talk to anyone? Family members? Did a release form give them this consent?
Great picture, by the way!
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