Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Woman Awarded Money For Waking During Surgery

On Wednesday, a court awarded a woman, from the southern Austrian province of Carinthia, $11,000 because five years ago she woke up during major abdominal surgery and was unable to tell the doctors how much pain she was in. She had originally demanded more than $57,000 in compensation for mental and physical suffering. The court rejected that amount because they said there wasn’t enough proof that the woman regained full consciousness during the operation. Her lawyer tried to argue the fact that the anesthesiologist forgot to attach a tube that was supposed to be used to keep the woman sedated. The woman said that she could fell the surgeons using a scalpel and other pieces of instruments but she wasn’t able to talk or move.

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