Surgery on wrong foot, medical body suspends 2 doctors for 6 months

THE DELHI Medical Council (DMC) has barred two doctors from practising for six months after finding them guilty of performing surgery on the wrong foot of a 24-year-old man.

The DMC’S disciplinary panel has recommended removal of the names of Dr Ashwani Maichand, consultant orthopaedics, and Dr Rahul Kakran, associate consultant orthopaedics, from the council’s state medical register for 180 days.

“The doctors failed to exercise reasonable degree of skill, knowledge and care, which is expected of a prudent doctor in treatment of patients,” it said.

According the officials, the patient in the case, Ravi Rai, had fractured his right foot after he slipped from a staircase and fell in June last year.

He was admitted to Fortis Hospital in Shalimar Bagh for treatment and was asked to undergo a surgery.

However, during the surgery, the doctors put multiple screws inside the left foot despite the right foot being identified with a marker.

According to official sources, the hospital had sacked the two orthopaedic surgeons, two nurses and an OT technician over the incident.

The council’s disciplinary panel observed that the doctors had also failed to detect a fracture in the patient’s spine despite it being visible in the X-ray.

“The patient, attendants or anaesthetists were never informed of any plan of surgery on the left foot and no consent for the same was taken... It is observed that the surgeons also failed to convey the suspicion of spine fracture to the anaesthetist before administration of spinal anaesthesia. It should have been avoided, especially when the patient had suspicion of spine fracture,” the panel said.