A woman in New York State was pronounced dead and about to have her organs removed for transplant when she awoke and opened her eyes.
Colleen Burns had been take to Joseph's hospital centre in Syracuse after taking a drug overdose in 2009. She was thought to have passed away,a victim of "cardiac death" and so her family agreed to turn off the 41 ytear-old's life support machine and donate her organs. When she was wheeled into the operating theatre she opened her eyes in response to the lights that shined on her face.
"They were just kind of shocked themselves,"she said. "It came as a surprise to them all as well." Ms Burns,a mother of three,was discharged from hospital a forthnight after the operation,but she committed suicide less than two years later. "She was so depressed that it really didn't make any sense to her,"her mother said. The family never sued the hospital but was fined $6,000(about N948,000)by the State health department in September,the case only became known after a newspaper made a request through the Freedom of Information Act. Mrs Lisa McGifferent,director of Consumers Union Safer Patient Project said there is no way of knowing how often near-catastrophe like Ms Burns case happen because in the USA,there is no system to collect information from hospitals about medical errors. The State investigating the case in March 2010 in response to an inquiry from The Post-Standard Investigation showed how unreasonable the medical personels that handled Ms Burns case were-(1) The State health department discovered that the overdose had sent her into deep coma,but the hospital personnels said it was an irreversible brain damage without doing enough to evaluate her condition. (2) Before her organs were to be removed,a nurse had performed a reflex test,by scraping a finger at the bottom of her foot. The toes curled forward,which couldn't be an expected reaction of a dead person*****the nurse must be a self-made one,or she must probably be in stupor. Or should I say the devil blind-folded them?*****(3)Outside the operating theatre,her nostrils appeared to show signs of breathing and her lips and tongue moved. Twenty minutes after those observations were made,the nurse gave Burns an injection of sedative Ativan,according to record,while in the doctors' notes,there is no mention of sedative or any indication they were aware of her improving condition. "If you have to sedate them or give them pain medication,they are not brain-dead and you shouldn't be harvesting their organs,"said Dr David Mayer,a surgeon and an associate professor of clinical surgery at New York Medical College. St Joseph hospital submitted a plan to correct problems identified in the investigation to State health department in August 2011. The State fined St Joseph and ordered it to hire a consultant to view the hospital's quality assurance program and implement the consultant's recommendation and to also hire a consulting neurologists to teach staff how to accurately diagnose brain death. Kerri Howell,spokeswoman for the hospital told the newspaper,"St Joseph's goal is to provide the highest quality of care to every patient everytime. These policies were followed in this case,which was complicated in terms of care and diagnosis. We have learned from this experiment and have modified our policies to include the type of unsual circumstance presented in this case."
