The alleged victim is said to have first read about the case in the media - only to be told a few months later by police that it was him the teenage girl was said to have helped operate on.

An Austrian surgeon allegedly let his teenage daughter drill a hole in a patient’s skull.

Following a forestry accident in January, a 33-year-old man was flown by air ambulance to Graz University Hospital, Styria, southeastern Austria, with serious head injuries, according to Kronen Zeitung, an Austrian newspaper.

He needed emergency surgery, but the doctor allegedly let his 13-year-old daughter take part in operating on him.

The newspaper reported that she even drilled a hole in the patient’s skull.

While the operation was said to have gone off without issue, the patient is still unable to work and investigations by the Graz public prosecutor’s officer against the entire surgical team are continuing.

It wasn’t until April that an anonymous complaint was logged to the public prosecutor’s office about the allegations, the newspaper reported.

The alleged victim initially learned about the case in the media before later being told by authorities he was a witness in an investigation.

  • Technus@lemmy.zipEnglish
    501·
    1 year ago

    Jfc, having the girl in the room at all is a liability, let alone letting her touch the patient.

    I hope this guy’s malpractice lawyer has good heart meds.

  • Carmakazi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    24·
    1 year ago

    My understanding is that the drill is fixtured in position in procedures as delicate as this, so that it really can’t move and drill anywhere except where it needs to. Likely why Dad thought (wrongly) that it was harmless.

    • tpihkal@lemmy.worldEnglish
      31·
      1 year ago

      I was thinking this as well. Headlines, no matter the story, are frequently meant to rage bait people.

      Is it pretty messed up? Yeah, I’d say that meets the definition. Was the guy actually in danger? Idk? I’m not a rocket scientist.

      Edit: Side note, I just saw a “cranial fixation system” for the first time where I work about a week ago. I do not work in a medical field so this is just a really strange coincidence. I won’t be elaborating on my career.

        • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I’ve never seen a mounted drill in the OR (though I imagine there is an option for it - bed-mounted instruments and equipment are pretty common).

          Here’s a video that kinda shows how craniotomies go - this is just an animation, nothing gory. The drill in the animation is different from the onces I’ve seen used for cranis (pistol-shaped vs just a cylinder like the one I linked earlier) but either way, it’s very much a hand-held device.

          Even micro surgery like when we’re drilling in a tympanoplasty or cochlear implant placement - literally done under a microscope - it’s still just a little dremmel looking thing.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
        01·
        1 year ago

        Well not only has Hollywood lied to us again, I now feel 10 times more horrified about this story.

  • WoahWoah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    These are the policies of take-your-daughter-to-work day. The doctor’s hands were tied.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.worldEnglish
      01·
      1 year ago

      Obviously it was take your kid to work day. Really it’s no different than letting them fly the plane, drive the Amtrak train, or run the hose on the riot police truck during a riot.

      (I’ll let you figure out which one of those examples is real)

  • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    …bro what the fuck was everyone else in the OR doing? Craniotomies take a full team of people, and every single person in that room should have lost their shit when a 13 year old got anywhere near it, let alone scrubbed in to the damn surgery and fucking practice medicine.

    Why didn’t the nurse unplug the thing? Why didn’t the tech cut the fucking cord? Why didn’t the anesthesiologist scroll more aggressively on his iPad??

    This story represents a metric shit-ton of failures, not just the surgeon/daughter.

    • stefounet123@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Maybe the ananymous report came from a member of the staff. I suspect that the kind of doctor who allows his unqualified daughter to operate on a patient is also an asshole to whom it is hard to say no as a subordinate.

  • giriinthejungle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I missed this in the news, then saw link refers to Kronen Zeitung report which is not a great newspaper to cite so thought for sure it cannot be entirely true? But it is! And here another link from Die Presse (google translate works fine here) which tells us it was not a jerk dad who brought his kid to drill holes but an idiot mom.

    • Agent641@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Did she get paid?

      Or is this yet another case of a minor being exploited for unpaid labor.