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Tony Hwang

wrote:
On Friday, November 1, 2013 8:11:33 PM UTC-4, willshak wrote:
wrote:

On Friday, November 1, 2013 5:28:48 PM UTC-4, Oren wrote:

"A Las Vegas toddler died a few weeks ago, and the reason for his

death wasn’t immediately clear. His illness began when he started

coughing blood, and doctors couldn’t figure out what was making the

child ill. The culprit wasn’t identifiable in an X-ray: a small

coin-shaped battery.

I think that part is a bit misleading. It wasn't specifically

identifiable as a battery, but they aren't saying that the

foreign object didn't show up in an x-ray. From that I would

conclude they saw it, but they didn't know specifically what

it was. If you have a kid coughing up blood and see a

foreign object on the x-ray, you would think that would be

enough to get the proper treatment started. They don't

say what was or wasn't done to treat him. Sounds like

another one of those costly malpractice suits to me.

No autopsy was performed?

Yes, per the article, that's when they identified it
as a battery.

I would think that they should if that object showed up during an Xray

and they couldn't identify what it was.

You would think they wouldn't wait until the kid was dead.
With a seriously ill kid vomiting up blood and an X-ray showing
an unknown foreign object, you would think they would take immediate
action to find out what the object was. Depending on where the
object was, eg stomach, they might be able to do that without
an endoscope Also, besides X-rays, there are other tools,
CT scan. Don't know if that would help indentify it or
not. But you would think with a very ill kid and an unknown
foreign object, they wouldn't just leave it there until he
died.

The article really has very little info on what was or
wasn't done, the timeline. It's possible the kid showed
up at the ER, they took an X-ray, and before they could do
much else, the kid died.

My main point was that Oren said the "culprit wasn't identifiable
on an X-ray". That left me with the initial impression that it
didn't show up at all, which I thought odd. Reading the article, it did
show up, it's just that they couldn't specifically identify it
as a battery. If that kid was alive for any length of time after
the X-ray, sounds like a malpractice case to me.

Hmmm,
Japanese took care of this particular issue years ago.
doctors some times act like a robot not using their diligence and brains.