Lethal treatment errors from the chief physician

Lethal treatment errors by chief physician: At St. Anthony's Hospital in the Lower Rhine Wegberg the former Chief Physician Arnold P. a patient without consent lemon juice for wound treatment given and according to the Langerichts Mönchengladbach guilty of bodily harm resulting in death.

The court now sentenced him to a suspended sentence of one year and three months. The two co-defendants were acquitted. In addition, under his direction at the hospital, however, there are still 7 cases of lemon juice wound treatment, which were officially referred to as ascorbic acid treatment. In them, the head physician and other of his colleagues for deadly malpractice on patients between the ages of 50 and 92 years responsible and responsible for it from this month in court. Overall, they are accused of 69 serious treatment errors: the mentioned seven deaths and about 60 cases of personal injury to patients.

In the opinion of the court, the treatment of freshly operated patients with non-germ-free lemon juice had experimental status and was done without the consent of those affected. According to media reports, he is said to have ordered as head of the clinic that the lemon juice should be used for wound treatment instead of expensive sterile solutions. Furthermore, should be saved under his Aegide from 2006 with a rigid austerity course in the administration of blood and expensive drugs.

Medical malpractice - a hot topic
According to the information provided by the General Patients' Association e.V. (APV), there are about 30,000 claims per year in Germany for so-called medical malpractice, which are reported to the medical liability insurance companies for compensation. According to the APV, there are supposed to be 25,000 deaths annually in Germany due to medical malpractice and a total of 100,000 medical injuries. The APV specifies a subdivision of the individual causes. Thereafter, 10,000 deaths are due to hygiene deficiencies, 6,000 deaths „by unindexed or incorrect drug prescriptions“, 2,000 deaths caused by late damage of unnecessary or improper X-ray applications. The remaining deaths are distributed, according to APV, „the order of severity and frequency according to the fields of anesthesia, obstetrics, surgery and orthopedics and the less risky specialties“.

At the beginning of 2008, the Alliance for Patient Safety founded in 2005 in Dusseldorf, with the support of the AOK, published a booklet on malpractice. This happened according to own data, in order to bring about a Enttabuisierung of malpractices. And for the health insurance was also the financial aspect in the room. According to Spiegel Online, the AOK stated at that time to be confronted with around 40,000 treatment error reproaches each year, of which 2000 proved to be justified. And, this was remarkable: each year about twelve million euros were calculated on follow-up costs. (Thorsten Fischer, Naturopath Osteopathy 16.01.2010)

additional Information

Mirror article on doctors' outings and the malpractice brochure