In Romania, a 66-year-old patient died a week after suffering severe burns during surgery. A fire had started due to improper use of an electrocautery with an alcohol-based disinfectant.
She did not survive her burns. Sunday, December 29, a week after being burned alive on the operating table, a 66-year-old Romanian died of her injuries, the Romanian Ministry of Health announced on Monday.
The procedure, which was part of his treatment for pancreatic cancer, resulted in a serious medical error on the part of surgeons. The latter used an electric scalpel that they wanted to disinfect with an alcohol-based disinfectant.
In contact with this highly flammable product, the patient would have “ignited like a torch”, wrote on his Facebook page the deputy Emanuel Ungureanu. He says he relies on the testimonies of the medical staff of the Floreasca emergency hospital in Bucharest where the operation took place. He also announced to file a complaint.
The fire, which threatened to spread, was finally extinguished by a nurse who threw a bucket of water on the patient, said several witnesses. This one was burned on 40% of the body.
A dilapidated hospital system
Romanian State Secretary for Health Horatiu Moldovan blamed “surgeons”, who should “have known that it is forbidden to use an alcohol-based disinfectant during surgeries performed with an electric scalpel ”. He promised to shed light on this “unfortunate incident” and regrets having been informed of the latest advances through the press.
For their part, the victim’s family said that the hospital staff had informed them of an “accident” during the operation but gave no details on the severity of the burns, nor the cause of them.
According to AFP, which tells the story, the Romanian hospital system still suffers from dilapidated equipment and a shortage of doctors, despite some improvements made possible by an increase in the health budget in recent years.
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