"Ghost Surgery"

[George K]

Family Claims Ghost Surgery Caused Son's Complications

The Cincinnati family, desperate for relief, sought out a surgery for Jack normally reserved for adult Parkinson’s patients. They were sent to a neurosurgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, ranked the best hospital in the nation.

Jack had the deep brain stimulator implanted in his brain in 2013. Through trial and error with different settings, this child’s life began to significantly change. The batteries in the chest send electric stimulations to the brain, helping to ease the symptoms.

But every few years, the batteries need to be replaced in a surgical procedure, which is what caused the family to fly back to the Mayo Clinic in November 2019. It's a surgery that 11-year-old Jack had before by the neurosurgeon who did his original surgery without any issues.

But his mom, Heather, says this time turned out to be very different.

"We believed he was the best surgeon out there for for DBS," she explaied. "The day before surgery we meet with him and he completely passes himself off as the one that's going to be doing the surgery."

Heather says when Jack woke up from surgery, he was screaming and flailing—she believes in severe pain—requiring five people to hold him down for over an hour.

Mayo would later dispute that Jack wasn't in any pain, saying he was rather suffering from a side effect some children experience from anesthesia​.

"In my opinion, I don't think he'll ever forget waking up from the surgery," said Jack's dad, Todd Steiger. "He can't tell us with words but we see his screaming at night."

Within a couple weeks of being home in Ohio, Heather says Jack spiked a fever and his surgical sites were red and swollen.

“We ended up being air cared, because he was deteriorating so much so quickly, back to Mayo for them to extract batteries,” she said.

After being sent home again, Jack developed an infection in his head, forcing the family to pay $4,000 to fly their son back to the Mayo Clinic in January—this time to have the entire deep brain stimulator removed.

By this point, Heather began to investigate the November surgery.

Heather said when she pulled up the operative note, she saw a name on it she hasn't seen before—the name of a second-year resident who performed the surgery.

While this switch-out might sound unusual, it’s not.

Read the thread:

[jon-nyc]

Interesting but yet again a case brought to the press where only one side gets to state its case.

[Mik]

I'm trying to imagine what the surgeon might have done to cause an infection in the head when the batteries were in the chest. Changing out batteries in electrophysiology devices is hardly new.

[George K]

@jon-nyc said in "Ghost Surgery":

only one side gets to state its case.

´Exactly.

Heather said when she pulled up the operative note, she saw a name on it she hasn't seen before—the name of a second-year resident who performed the surgery
It's SOP to have EVERYONE'S name on the Op Report who touches the patient. Note, it doesn't say that the surgeon's name was NOT there.

[George K]

@Mik said in "Ghost Surgery":

I'm trying to imagine what the surgeon might have done to cause an infection in the head when the batteries were in the chest.

Also, the occurrence of an infection in no way means that it's the fault of the trainee. There are a million reasons for this to happen.

[Mik]

That was kind of where I was going, yeah. Any time you have an invasive procedure there is a risk of infection.