JJNN 22 June 12th, 2008

Welcome again to JJNN for Thursday June 12th, 2008. Today we are going to open the "oops" file.

I think the number one thing that you never want to hear your doctor say is "oops." It usually means something bad just happened. You sometimes see news stories like this, but this one is big.

It seems that a 70 year old man went to Tokyo University's hospital for surgery on his eye for glaucoma. He was only suppose to get surgery on his left eye on that day so it was treated with sterilizing agents and prepared for the operation. So far, so good, right? Well yes, but than the surgeon enters the room.

Because the left eye was mistakenly covered up with gauze, the surgeon commenced the surgery on the right eye. The mistake was not found out until they checked on everything the next morning. The staff of the hospital should have noticed before the operation because the nurse marked the patient's left temple to prevent any slip-ups.

Well things like that don't seem to work any more. Simple things like marks that clearly say "Cut open this eye!" just are not even looked at any more. I guess simple is no longer best.

The surgeon ended up apologizing the next day, but is on record as saying something like "Well we had to operate on that eye for the same problem any way." Does not sound very apologetic to me. Sure, the operation had to go on for the eye in any case, but they are overlooking one major problem. The patient's right eye was never treated with sterilizing agents. There was a chance that the patient's eye could have gotten infected. This would be a bad thing.


Any way, it is now time for the word of the day. Today's word is　こめかみ(こめかみ). It is pronounced komekami and means temple(of a forehead). The reason it is called komekami is because kome means rice and kami means chew. When you chew rice or something else the temple moves a little. Neat, huh?

That's it for today. See you next time at JJNN.