An 87 year old lady who is in excellent health comes into the department because she couldn’t move her leg. When she woke up and was fine. Her family helped her get dressed. She read the newspaper at breakfast. Then she went to the bathroom, was in there about 15 minutes, and began yelling for help because her leg hurt and she couldn’t get off the toilet. The family thought that she was sitting too long on the toilet, irritating her sciatic nerve, and thought she just needed to let her leg relax for a little while. A couple of hours later, her leg was hurting her more and she still couldn’t move it, so they called the ambulance.
This was a wonderful little lady who looked like she was 60. She was well-dressed. She carried on a normal conversation and was completely coherent. She joked back and forth with us. Her hair was done up perfectly and she had a fresh manicure. She took a blood pressure pill each day and that was about it. Unfortunately, when you looked at her leg, it was mottled and cold from the mid-thigh to her toes. It was obvious that she had an acute arterial occlusion of her leg. See an example on the right side of the picture above where there is no dye advancing in the femoral artery past the mid-thigh.
I called our vascular surgeon who came immediately and evaluated the patient. He recommended that she be transferred to the tertiary care center in our area where they had “more experience” dealing with these issues and could perhaps do intra-arterial thrombolytics. I called the vascular surgeon at the tertiary care center and he gave a lot of push back. Why were we transferring the patient when we had a vascular surgeon on staff? He demanded to talk to the patient and the family on the phone. While he was talking to the family, the patient had an episode of pulseless ventricular tachycardia.
The patient was a DNR, so we abided by her wishes and did not resuscitate her. About 30 seconds later, she had a pause in her rhythm and spontaneously converted back to normal sinus rhythm. She woke up asking “what happened?”
Upon hearing that the patient had an episode of ventricular tachycardia, the vascular surgeon at the tertiary care center told the family that he would not accept an unstable patient and hung up the phone. The ambulance company refused the transfer.
Our vascular surgeon was faced with a Morton’s Fork. If the patient didn’t have surgery, she would lose her leg and would likely die from the ensuing complications. However, the patient was also a high risk for having surgery. She just demonstrated an unstable cardiac rhythm and her cardiac enzymes were abnormal. Surgery would likely kill her.
The patient and family both wanted the surgery done. “Life wouldn’t be worth living without her leg,” they said. The anesthesiologist at the hospital was having a cow. “Let me get this straight. You want me to justify providing general anesthesia to a patient with an active heart attack so she can have a major surgery?” Time was running short. The artery must be opened within 6 hours of the event. We were at about 5 hours and 15 minutes from the estimated onset of symptoms.
So the patient was taken to surgery to try to re-establish blood flow to her leg. She survived surgery and her leg was warm again.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say that the patient either died or she lost her leg. Let’s also say that the family is very upset about how the patient’s care ended up. Let’s look at the possible outcomes.
If the patient didn’t go to surgery, she loses her leg. The hospital fails to stabilize an emergency medical condition. It gets fined for an EMTALA violation. A shotgun lawsuit against me, the vascular surgeon, the anesthesiologist, and anyone else whose name appears on the chart alleges that we failed to provide limb-saving treatment to the patient. Maybe the patient dies from complications from the amputation. “None of this would have happened if the negligent doctors appropriately treated the patient,” the plaintiff attorney argues.
If the patient goes to surgery, she stands a high likelihood of dying. A shotgun lawsuit alleges that there was a lack of informed consent, that we didn’t give intra-arterial thrombolytics (or get her somewhere that could give them), that we exaggerated the likelihood of a bad outcome if we used conservative treatment, and a litany of other negligent acts. “These negligent doctors knew that there was a high likelihood that the patient would die in surgery, but they chose to risk her life anyway,” argues the plaintiff attorney. “That’s not just negligence, that’s gross negligence. This family deserves punitive damages to keep doctors from making reckless decisions like this in the future.”
If the patient actually went to the tertiary care center and the intra-arterial thrombolytics didn’t work, then everyone is liable because in a time-sensitive situation like this, we chose to waste time attempting a less effective therapy rather than going to surgery and manually removing the clot. “These negligent physicians just let the clock run out on this poor woman’s chances at having a normal leg.”
These scenarios just illustrate the difference between prospective and retrospective medicine. Doctors have to make decisions in five minutes and lawyers have 5 years to tell you why those decisions were wrong.
When patients wonder why medical costs are so high, why fewer and fewer specialists want to take call for emergency departments, and why doctors practice defensive medicine, think about cases like this and decisions similar to this that occur throughout hospitals all over the country every single day.
What would you do if you were the surgeon?