In 2011, a patient had been operated on by mistake. He had nearly lost his sight a few years later and was seeking redress. Justice condemned the clinic.
In the Limoges affair, justice delivered its verdict, and it goes in the direction of the first expertises. She dismisses the patient, believing that his loss of vision is not linked to the error in the operation but to the normal course of his pathologies. However, the court recognizes real damage. It condemns the clinic and two of the three doctors to each pay a fine of 1,500 euros and cover the legal costs. The third doctor had previously concluded a compensation agreement with the patient.
The patient had appealed to the Regional Commission for Conciliation and Compensation for Medical Accidents after having undergone an ablation of the vitreous body, a gelatinous substance at the back of the eye. In 2011, the octogenarian went to the Chégnieux clinic for an ordinary eyelid intervention. In the waiting room, he is asked to remove his hearing aids. Believing he heard his name, he answered the doctors’ call, in fact taking a place from another patient. The error was not noticed until the next day: the identity check was obviously faulty.
Pathologies already present
In 2014, his vision fell sharply, to almost total blindness. Man attributes this symptom to the operative error. But the experts conclude that this is due to the normal course of pathologies which he presented several years before the incident. The patient has in fact been suffering from cataracts and AMD (Age-Related Macular Degeneration) since 2007. The second opinion proves them right today.
But the patient did not lose everything: this error would indeed have saved his life! During the operation, the anesthesiologist notices a pulmonary embolism, the sudden obstruction of part of the pulmonary artery often leading to death. He reacts very quickly and the patient is taken care of quickly, which avoids a fatal outcome. The medical team scheduled for the initially planned eyelid operation would probably not have been able to detect this anomaly. A chance in its misfortune.
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