It’s probably every surgery patient’s nightmare.
Mere minutes before doctors at a hospital in Syracuse, N.Y., were about to remove the organs of a patient they thought had died, the woman opened her eyes and looked straight up at the operating room lights above her.
Realizing their patient wasn't dead, the shocked doctors quickly called off the surgery that would have harvested the woman's organs to be donated to patients on transplant waiting lists.
The patient, Colleen Burns, a mother of three, had been taken to hospital after overdosing on Xanax, Benadryl and a muscle relaxant.Doctors thought she had irreversible brain damage from the overdose and had a cardiac death, meaning her heart had stopped.
They placed her on a ventilator and consulted with the family, who agreed to donate her organs.
But in fact, Burns was not dead; she was simply in a deep coma with no significant brain damage.
The Syracuse Post-Standard newspaper was the first to learn of the 2009 case after an investigation that chronicled the series of mistakes that led to the near-miss at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center.
The New York Health Department found the hospital had not done enough to investigate its own errors and what went wrong that day to ensure such an incident wouldn’t happen again.
Then, the health department decided last September that St. Joseph's was negligent in its handling of the case and fined the hospital $6,000, as well as $16,000 for another incident.
The state health department found that staff at the hospital the night Burns arrived had not done enough to try to reverse her overdose. They also did not complete enough brain scans. As well, they found that doctors had ignored the nurses who claimed they saw signs of life in Burns.
The day before the planned surgery, for example, a nurse had performed a reflex test by scraping her finger on the sole of Burns foot. She found that Burns toes curled downward, suggesting there was good brain activity.
What’s more, nurses noticed that Burns seemed to be breathing on her own after being taken off the respirator as she was being prepared to be wheeled into surgery, with her nostrils flaring and her lips moving.
It wasn't until Burns opened her eyes in the operating room that doctors realized their mistake.
Burns eventually recovered and was discharged from hospital two weeks later. Unfortunately, 16 months afterwards, in January 2011, Burns died by suicide at the age of 41.
Her mother, Lucille Kuss, told the Syracuse Post-Standard that her daughter was never upset about the error at the hospital.
"She was so depressed that it really didn't make any difference to her," Kuss told the paper.
Mere minutes before doctors at a hospital in Syracuse, N.Y., were about to remove the organs of a patient they thought had died, the woman opened her eyes and looked straight up at the operating room lights above her.
Realizing their patient wasn't dead, the shocked doctors quickly called off the surgery that would have harvested the woman's organs to be donated to patients on transplant waiting lists.
The patient, Colleen Burns, a mother of three, had been taken to hospital after overdosing on Xanax, Benadryl and a muscle relaxant.Doctors thought she had irreversible brain damage from the overdose and had a cardiac death, meaning her heart had stopped.
They placed her on a ventilator and consulted with the family, who agreed to donate her organs.
But in fact, Burns was not dead; she was simply in a deep coma with no significant brain damage.
The Syracuse Post-Standard newspaper was the first to learn of the 2009 case after an investigation that chronicled the series of mistakes that led to the near-miss at St. Joseph's Hospital Health Center.
The New York Health Department found the hospital had not done enough to investigate its own errors and what went wrong that day to ensure such an incident wouldn’t happen again.
Then, the health department decided last September that St. Joseph's was negligent in its handling of the case and fined the hospital $6,000, as well as $16,000 for another incident.
The state health department found that staff at the hospital the night Burns arrived had not done enough to try to reverse her overdose. They also did not complete enough brain scans. As well, they found that doctors had ignored the nurses who claimed they saw signs of life in Burns.
The day before the planned surgery, for example, a nurse had performed a reflex test by scraping her finger on the sole of Burns foot. She found that Burns toes curled downward, suggesting there was good brain activity.
What’s more, nurses noticed that Burns seemed to be breathing on her own after being taken off the respirator as she was being prepared to be wheeled into surgery, with her nostrils flaring and her lips moving.
It wasn't until Burns opened her eyes in the operating room that doctors realized their mistake.
Burns eventually recovered and was discharged from hospital two weeks later. Unfortunately, 16 months afterwards, in January 2011, Burns died by suicide at the age of 41.
Her mother, Lucille Kuss, told the Syracuse Post-Standard that her daughter was never upset about the error at the hospital.
"She was so depressed that it really didn't make any difference to her," Kuss told the paper.
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