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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]He came in with severe abdominal pain and a fever. He can’t lay flat to be weighed (to figure out if they could use their CT machine) so they had to insert breathing tube while he was upright. At one point I think one of the interns said something about one possible diagnosis that could have a higher fatality, but I don’t recall what that was. The odd thing to me was that despite the patient saying he had no close family he could call, only a sister who he was estranged from, the staff then took it upon themselves to track down this sister. That seems a little bit of an overstep to assume he would want her notified without his direct consent. [/quote]

The comment about fatality rates was just about surgery generally -- obesity can cause surgical complications and leads to much higher fatality rates in general.

I did think that comment was transparently stupid because (1) it was made within earshot of the patient before they even knew if he needed surgery so it's going to cause perhaps unnecessary anxiety, and (2) different surgeries have different risks depending on how they are done. Saying he has a "50% fatality" rate for surgery, generally, is pointless when you still have no idea whether this is bowel obstruction, burst appendix, gall stone, tumor, or what. His chances vary greatly depending on his diagnosis. Yes, his weight makes his treatment harder and means almost any diagnosis is going to be trickier for him than a normal weight person. But asserting that there is a 50% fatality rate for surgery, generally, is just a useless factoid during the diagnostic process.[/quote]

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