Wednesday, February 17, 2010

This is the kind of thing that makes people doubt the medical establishment

A woman in Columbia was declared dead at a hospital. But then when an employee of a funeral home was about to inject embalming fluid she started moving.

BOGOTA, Colombia - A Colombian woman declared dead of a heart attack moved one of her arms just as an undertaker was about to embalm her, doctors said Wednesday.

Noelia Serna, 45, was rushed to a hospital in the city of Cali, where she was in critical condition in an intensive care unit Wednesday, said hospital director Luis Fernando Rendon.

"Her chances of survival are slim," Rendon said....

On rare occasions, a person's heart rate and breathing can drop to undetectable levels, leading doctors to erroneously declare a patient dead, said neurosurgeon Juan Mendoza Vega, a member of the Colombian National Medical Ethics Board.

"It can happen," he said. "But it's not a matter of coming back to life because the person was never dead."


I guess, but I'd hope that if I ever get pronounced dead, that I'm really dead.

2 comments:

sandyh said...

I don't see that it's anything worse than a lot of health care horror stories we all have witnessed within our personal circle of family and friends. The system is broke because it is designed to fail those that need help and profit those that are incompetent.

Eli Blake said...

In the U.S. you get pronounced dead when your insurance runs out.