A video of a doctor punching their 82-year-old patient in the middle of surgery has shocked viewers across the internet.
While the incident occurred in 2019, a video of it was only shared recently. In the clip, a surgeon can be seen operating on a patient’s eyes. He appears to say something to her, to which she responds. After a second, he begins punching the woman in the head.
So what happened here? According to the BBC, the surgeon had directed the woman to stay still during her surgery. However, owing to a reaction to the local anesthesia used during the procedure, she “moved her head and eyeballs multiple times.”
The surgeon then directed her to stop doing this in Mandarin, which was a problem as the woman spoke a local dialect. Rather than attempt to resolve this issue, the surgeon took the approach shown in the video — punching her repeatedly in the head. “After the surgery, the hospital’s management apologised and paid 500 yuan ($70, £55) as compensation, according to the patient’s son who spoke to local media outlets,” reads the BBC piece. “He also said his mother is now blind in her left eye, though it is not clear whether it was due to the incident.”
While the connection between this incident and the woman’s blindness is not certain, eye movement during surgery can absolutely cause blindness and other issues. During surgery, “eye motion can cause abnormal cuts, choppy tissue elimination, or, in extreme cases, corneal perforation,” notes the Visual Aids Centre.
In a Reddit thread discussing the incident, some questioned why her head was not immobilized. She likely was, one user said, but it probably wasn’t enough. “I just had eye surgery, and yes, there are immobilizing braces. However, there is cushioning, and one could still move if determined,” wrote user MarsRocks97. “Also, there is no way to stabilize the eye, and the surgeon relies on the patient to keep focused on a single spot. The patient must be awake for this as sleeping also induces eye movement.”
If you’re interested in what happened after the video, the surgeon was suspended, and the CEO of the hospital group in which this event took place was dismissed. But that only happened after this video went viral on Chinese social media — as in, four years after the incident originally took place. Also, the woman has not received any more than the $70 she was originally paid.
Maybe I’ll put off LASIK for another year after all.
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