Cancer is one of the deadliest malaise of our times. Not just from healthcare point of view. It takes a humongous toll on the family as well. This case, sadly, demonstrates this hard fact of life.

The patient experienced severe pain in his right knee and noticed swelling on it. He visited an orthopaedic surgeon at the hospital. The doctor diagnosed femur-displaced fracture and performed ORIF procedure.

This case is a learning for hospitals on two important procedural aspects – first, in maintaining systems to keep a check on expiry dates of medicines, to ensure that they are discarded and not administered to patients. Second, taking improper consent or adding / removing anything from consent forms can be inferred as fabrication.

Hospital availing duties of BAMS or non-allopathic doctors is a contentious issue. There are merits of it and there is opposition also. This is a case where the hospital and its owner-doctor were held negligent for leaving the patient under the care of BAMS doctors ‘without informing’ him or his attendants.

For some unknown reasons patients don’t reveal their complete medical history. This lack of transparency could prove to be counterproductive and even fatal for them, as happened in this case.

This probably is one of the most unfortunate cases where a doctor volunteered for a CME surgery, but died before even the procedure began

The patient met with a small accident and her right hand was fractured. The orthopaedic surgeon performed a minor surgery to insert k-wire and applied plaster. The patient continued to experience pain even five months after the procedure, and hence visited another orthopaedic specialist who opined that elbow injury was missed by the earlier doctor and the radiologist.