Specializing in back operations, a surgeon from Grenoble will be suspended for 18 months by decision of the Order of Physicians. Health Insurance has identified 54 cases in which he could be implicated. The practitioner’s lawyer evokes a “relentlessness”.
Operated about ten years ago for a problem of back pain, Christophe Fuselier, a former truck driver, now travels in a wheelchair. His iliac vein, which drains the legs and the small pelvis, was accidentally severed during the operation. Result, a significant haemorrhage, a lack of irrigation of his leg and repeated operations following a multiplication of post-surgical infections. “For 10 years, this forced me to return almost every month to the hospital,” he says. Eventually, he had to have his leg amputated.
In January 2019, the Council of the College of Physicians decided to suspend the surgeon in question from his duties as of May 1, reports 20 minutes. A decision which follows, beyond the complaint lodged by Christophe Fuselier, an investigation carried out by the Health Insurance which made it possible to identify 54 files relating to the years 2013 and 2014 in which patients would have been operated “without justification medical”.
“We cannot operate on people by doing anything”
“At the start, I thought I was the only one. But after 53 other cases, we are no longer in human error. It is not normal, we cannot operate on people by doing anything “, accuses the victim today. Another patient points to the responsibility of the Grenoble surgeon. “In 2015, I was diagnosed in the emergency room with a spontaneous fracture of a vertebra. I was operated on the next day without having signed any discharge, says Gracieuse Masciave. However, I suffer from osteoporosis and I was therefore not not operable”. She is now forced to wear a corset for four hours a day following another fracture linked to the first operation. “I’m disabled for the rest of my life,” she says.
“We make my client pass for the butcher of Grenoble”
“We pass off my client for the butcher of Grenoble and we trample on the presumption of innocence with both feet”, replies Bernard Boulloud, the surgeon’s lawyer targeted by the suspension decided by the Council of the Order. “The CPAM report criticizes my client for a lack of quality of care, a lack of sufficient prior information, a lack of quality in the operative follow-up, but we are not talking about medical error”, he adds. by denouncing a “relentlessness” of which the practitioner would be a victim. He intends to seize the Council of State to challenge the decision to suspend his client and file a complaint against X to denounce a “media lynching”.
Higher risk of blame for orthopedic surgeons
According to the figures available to the MACSF, a mutual insurance company for health professionals which has 145,000 members, orthopedic surgeons and neurosurgeons are two specialties for which the risk of being called into question following what the profession calls ” adverse events” is the highest. “It’s always a tragedy for the patient, but also for the doctor who likes being at the helm of a court as much as a magistrate in a hospital bed!”, declared Nicolas Gombault, director general of the MACSF , during the Univers Médecins program of the CSMF union, broadcast on its website on October 21, 2018.
The prevention of these events and possible legal consequences has been the subject of several legislative texts aimed at avoiding an “American-style drift” in terms of the judicialization of medical practice. The patient can seize a civil judge, a penal judge, the council of the Order of the doctors, or the Health insurance. Since the so-called “Kouchner” law (named after the Minister of Health at the time) adopted in 2002, Conciliation and Compensation Commissions have been created to avoid litigation.
“Three-quarters of cases are now settled before the judge,” says Laure Soulier, lawyer specializing in health-related cases at the Parisian firm Auber.
“Explain before the act and manage the consequences with humanity”
“What is good medical practice is to explain before the act, to expose the risks and, if an accident occurs, to stay in contact with the patient to manage the consequences with humanity”, recalled Nicolas Gombault in the CSMF program of October 21, 2018. It is the non-compliance with this obligation to inform and follow up that the Health Insurance report points to in the case of the Grenoble surgeon.
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