A brilliant surgeon offered an untested treatment to dying patients. Was it innovation or overreach? An interesting article published in the New Yorker. Free to read, by Emily Eakin
Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle
Excerpt:
"Muizelaar had devised the procedure in collaboration with a young
neurosurgeon in his department, Rudolph Schrot. But as the consent form
crafted by the surgeons, and signed by Egan and his wife, made clear,
the procedure had never been tried before, even on a laboratory animal.
Nor had it been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The
surgeons had no data to suggest what might constitute a therapeutic dose
of Enterobacter, or a safe delivery method. The procedure was
heretical in principle: deliberately exposing a patient to bacteria in
the operating room violated a basic tenet of modern surgery, the concept
known as “maintaining a sterile field,” which, along with prophylactic
antibiotics, is credited with sharply reducing complications and
mortality rates. “The ensuing infection,” the form cautioned, “may be
totally ineffective in treatment of the tumor” and could cause
“vegetative state, coma or death.”
Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle
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