Virginia Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice Blog

Woman Dies From Burns Incurred In Surgery

Here's an article about a woman in Illinois who recently passed from injuries incurred during surgery. The cause of death? "Complications from thermal burns" according to the Tennessee state medical examiner.

Burns? Incurred in surgery? That's right, the woman, 65-year-old Janice McCall, caught on fire in the OR. What caused the fire? Either they don't know or they're not saying. Either way this will be an interesting medical malpractice case to follow. Presumably "lighting the patient on fire" is not within the standard of care regardless of the condition. The next determination will be whether it was negligence on the part of the hospital that caused the fire. If it wasn't gross negligence on the hospital's part I'd be very interested to know the coincidences that lead up to combustion.

Either way, if you're going into surgery, make sure there's a fire extinguisher in the room. Here's the Fox News article on the surgery burn case.