An Austrian surgeon allegedly let his teenage daughter drill a hole in a patient’s skull.
Following a forestry accident in January, a 33-year-old man was flown by air ambulance to Graz University Hospital, Styria, southeastern Austria, with serious head injuries, according to Kronen Zeitung, an Austrian newspaper.
He needed emergency surgery, but the doctor allegedly let his 13-year-old daughter take part in operating on him.
The newspaper reported that she even drilled a hole in the patient’s skull.
While the operation was said to have gone off without issue, the patient is still unable to work and investigations by the Graz public prosecutor’s officer against the entire surgical team are continuing.
It wasn’t until April that an anonymous complaint was logged to the public prosecutor’s office about the allegations, the newspaper reported.
The alleged victim initially learned about the case in the media before later being told by authorities he was a witness in an investigation.
…bro what the fuck was everyone else in the OR doing? Craniotomies take a full team of people, and every single person in that room should have lost their shit when a 13 year old got anywhere near it, let alone scrubbed in to the damn surgery and fucking practice medicine.
Why didn’t the nurse unplug the thing? Why didn’t the tech cut the fucking cord? Why didn’t the anesthesiologist scroll more aggressively on his iPad??
This story represents a metric shit-ton of failures, not just the surgeon/daughter.
I’m confused why she was there in the first place
Obviously it was take your kid to work day. Really it’s no different than letting them fly the plane, drive the Amtrak train, or run the hose on the riot police truck during a riot.
(I’ll let you figure out which one of those examples is real)
I’m gonna say “drive the train”
Oof, it was fly the plane. It’s okay though they never did it again.
My understanding is that the drill is fixtured in position in procedures as delicate as this, so that it really can’t move and drill anywhere except where it needs to. Likely why Dad thought (wrongly) that it was harmless.
Surgical tech here!
In craniotomies, once the skull is exposed the doc will use basically a handheld dremel to punch a few holes, then connect the dots with a side-biting bit.
Could she have done the initial drill in such a manner? Mounted drill etc
I’ve never seen a mounted drill in the OR (though I imagine there is an option for it - bed-mounted instruments and equipment are pretty common).
Here’s a video that kinda shows how craniotomies go - this is just an animation, nothing gory. The drill in the animation is different from the onces I’ve seen used for cranis (pistol-shaped vs just a cylinder like the one I linked earlier) but either way, it’s very much a hand-held device.
Even micro surgery like when we’re drilling in a tympanoplasty or cochlear implant placement - literally done under a microscope - it’s still just a little dremmel looking thing.
I just wanted to be sure to say thank you for your thoughtful replies with sources, I have learned some things and enjoyed it.
Well not only has Hollywood lied to us again, I now feel 10 times more horrified about this story.
Yo did she do a good job tho?
Did she get paid?
Or is this yet another case of a minor being exploited for unpaid labor.
