Tall Tales From the OR
If you stick around surgery long enough, you'll see it all.
J
ust when I thought I'd seen it all, another hard-to-believe
moment manifests in the OR. The wisdom of experience mere-
ly means that I have personally encountered nearly everything
that can go wrong in surgery. Here's just a sampling of the memory
menu of the last 24 years of surgical bliss, all based on true events I
wouldn't believe unless I'd been there to witness them.
• Sterility maelstrom. Years ago I was doing a shoulder arthroscopy
when halfway through the procedure the nurse informed me that my
instruments were not sterile. Turns out that somebody "misinterpret-
ed" the autoclave indicator — the scope set was washed but never
sterilized. Ow!!! I promptly stopped the case, irrigated the shoulder
thoroughly, lit 3 candles at church and placed the patient on antibi-
otics for several days. Thankfully no infection manifested and I was
able to convince the patient to return to the OR to have her procedure
completed. My gastric secretions (and coronaries) have never been
the same.
• Graft trouble. Once during an ACL reconstruction, after carefully
C U T T I N G R E M A R K S
John D. Kelly IV, MD
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They used crotchet hooks in the pioneer days of
shoulder arthroscopy to retrieve sutures. Thank
heavens there was one on the set — undoubtedly
purchased before the scrub nurse was born.