What happens inside the operating room that surgeons don't tell you?

Thomas Cayne

Today, my girlfriend was called during lunch with a friend for an “urgency.” Two gynecologists had once again messed up open surgery, and they did not know what to do.

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So she was called to fix and finish the procedure.

The surgical plan was to perform a so-called Wertheim-Meigs operation on a patient with cervical cancer — they would remove the patient’s uterus, pelvic lymph nodes, ovaries and vaginal tissue right down to the vaginal floor.

And they messed up.

Beside butchering the poor woman, they couldn’t find the patient’s urethra at some point, and consequently were stuck. And they had cut a whole in the patient’s bladder.

So who you gonna call ?

My girlfriend found the urethra and completed the surgery on her own. While the incompetent douche bags were hanging around.

Now this is not an isolated case. These specific doctors have opened up many a patient without mastering the competence of performing the procedure they were planning to do. (Apparently it’s a typical gynecologist thing.)

And many a time, a general surgeon or urologist had to intervene to save the patient.

“These guys should never try such operations, they are simply not capable. They will leave stuff inside, butcher the patient’s inside, and then get completely lost. Sometimes at a heavy cost.”

The conclusion is simple: this has to stop.

So further steps will have to be taken in order to prevent them from butchering more patients. To start certain procedures which they do not master at all. To ruin bladders, to endanger patients and unborn babies. To risk a patient’s future by not performing cancer-related surgery adequately and leave a lot of it inside.

And it will be highly nontrivial, and delicate. And whatever happens, the gynecologists will try and do everything to prevent the details from leaking out. And they will succeed.

This is what the surgeons won’t tell you.

This is what you’ll never know.