A Nobel prize winner for medicine shared his opinion on the news that a widow is suing a doctor, alleging that he removed the wrong organ during her late husband's surgery.
Dr. Barry Marshall, who won a Nobel prize in 2005 in Physiology or Medicine, shared a link on X (formerly Twitter), to the story, writing on Wednesday, "I hate it when that happens - glad I'm not a surgeon, it's very tricky stuff. Man dies after liver removed instead of spleen. It happens more often than you think."
According to the lawsuit, on August 21, Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky was performing laparoscopic splenectomy -- removal of a spleen -- on 70-year-old Bill Bryan, but removed the patient's liver instead and mis-labeled it as the spleen. Bill later died and is survived by his wife Beverly, who is suing Shaknovsky and Florida's Ascension Sacred Heart Emerald Coast Hospital.
In a response to Newsweek's request for comment, Marshall said the incident seemed "too incredible to be true".
"Spleen is left, liver is right - but sometimes not!" Marshall, who discovered a bacteria that causes gastritis and ulcers, added.
Such incidents do indeed happen. In 2007, neurosurgeons performed a brain surgery on the wrong side of the brain at Rhode Island Hospital three times in one year, CBS reported at the time. The first two patients survived, but the last patient died while still in hospital care. ABC News later reported that one of the doctors was suspended, but only after the second incident.
Another case happened at a Veterans Administration hospital in Los Angeles in 2007. An Air Force veteran was set to have his left testicle removed as there was a chance it harbored cancerous cells. The veteran already had cancer in 1989 and has decided to have the surgery as a preventative measure, the LA Times reported.
The surgeon, however, made a mistake and removed his healthy testicle instead. As a result, the veteran didn't have enough testosterone production which can lead to "sexual dysfunction, depression, fatigue, weight gain and osteoporosis" in the long term, according to the LA Times.
In 2003, the U.S. Joint Commission held a summit to prevent these incidents and developed The Universal Protocol for Preventing Wrong Site, Wrong Procedure, and Wrong Person Surgery. This protocol is supposed to ensure doctors double-check everything before operating. Part of the procedure is an "ongoing process of information gathering and verification" and constant team communication.