What Are Iatrogenic Diseases?

Published previously on Factoidz.com

Every doctor must take an oath not to harm you while giving you medical care. The actual words are "Primum non nocere," translated into "First do no harm." I first learned about iatrogenic diseases when my surgeon refused to stick a needle into my abdomen to withdraw some fluid from a post surgical area. I had a hernia that he repaired and he put a piece of mesh in there to help keep my stomach from coming back through the surgical area. I first got the hernia after having my gastric bypass. That area became weak, and my stomach began to poke through and cause a lump in my abdomen.

The hernia became large enough, and bothersome enough that I had to see a surgeon. Dr. Brandies from Winder, Georgia did my surgery. After the surgery, a serous fluid backed up behind the mesh and it was causing discomfort. He checked me and really didn't want to insert a needle into the area. He sent me home and asked me to wait it out for a month and see if it went down. A month later, I went back with the fluid still there. Dr. Brandies thought about it, but his professional judgment was to not insert the needle. I asked him why he was so reluctant to stick the needle in there.

Here is how he explained it. He said he took an oath to first do no harm. He said there was a potential for harm to be done to me if he inserted the needle beyond the mesh in my surgical site. He said that no matter how careful he was about cleaning the area before inserting the needle, that bacteria could enter into the mesh with the needle, and if that happened a very bad infection could follow. He also explained that if an infection did develop, he would have to open me up and do another surgery and clean out the infection, remove the mesh and start all over again by suturing in a new meshing into that area. His explanation of "First do no harm" made sense to me, so I went home and waited it out. The serous fluid behind the mesh did go down on its own over time. There is no more discomfort in that area.

I developed a kidney problem due to a medication called Celebrex. I had been on Celebrex for years. I was on this medication because it was the only one I could take after having a gastric bypass. I couldn't take Advil or any type of anti-inflammatory medication due to my bypass. After several years of taking Celebrex I developed a kidney problem. The first year it was noticed, it was thought it could be a glitch with the test, or that I might have been dehydrated. I was advised to come back in a month but be sure I drink lots of water before the test. I forgot about going. The following year when I had my lab work done, there was a drastic change for the worse in my kidney function.

I knew something was wrong with me, but I had no idea what. I had been extremely fatigued and feeling nauseated all the time, but didn't know why. The reason why I was so sick was that the Celebrex was destroying my kidney function. The doctor stopped me from taking it, and told me I could only take Tylenol from then on. The next month I went back for another test for my kidneys and my kidney function was fine again. I also began to feel better also.

It's not just medications that can cause iatrogenic diseases; errors that doctors make can also cause problems for patients. I know of a person who had a hysterectomy. Most doctors will ask that the patient urinate prior to surgery, or they might also insert a catheter prior to surgery so that the bladder is empty at the time of surgery. This person wasn't asked to void and she didn't have a catheter inserted. The end result was that the patient's bladder was nicked during surgery. What started out to be a routine surgery turned out to be a massive ordeal for the patient. The doctor explained what had happened to the patient, which was only the right thing to do. That doctor is now retired, but after that ordeal he made it a practice to have a catheter inserted prior to surgery and the catheter would be removed the evening of the surgery or the next day. This iatrogenic injury was caused by either the doctor not inserting a catheter just prior to surgery to drain the bladder, or the nurses instructing the patient to void. I'm not sure where the breakdown was, but it is possible that the nurses instructed the patient to void, and maybe she didn't feel the urge at the time. The sad fact is that this person suffered a huge infection and she was in the hospital for a long time.

Source:

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