Patient Catches Fire

This happens 550-to-600 times a year???

• A southern Illinois woman died after being severely burned in a flash fire while undergoing surgery, a rare but vexing problem in operating rooms.

  Janice McCall, 65, of Energy, Ill., died at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., on Sept. 8, six days after being burned on the operating table at Heartland Regional Medical Center in Marion, Ill., her family's attorney said.

• Surgical flash fires are most often sparked by electric surgical tools when oxygen builds up under surgical drapes. They occur an estimated 550 to 600 times a year -- a tiny fraction of the millions of surgeries performed in the U.S. annually -- and only kill about one or two people each year...

Granted, you don't want dust and stuff blowing around an operating room with people cut open and their guts hanging out, but you don't want them catching fire either. Jane Doe goes in for a little nip and tuck and comes out needing skin grafts and worse?

Looks like we'll be putting off those retirement knee replacements, rotator cuff and liposuctions for a bit yet.