There is perhaps no other branch of science as in medicine where unexpected events and outcomes occur often enough to invoke ‘luck” as an explanation.
Every surgeon will have a story to tell of how the condition of an otherwise “stable” patient thought to have a very low risk suddenly plunged down after a small procedure despite everything being done right, much to his embarrassment and dismay!
But when a patient’s condition tumbles down unexpectedly due to the “luck” factor and results in death, it is hard for relatives to accept.
Take a look at the recent story of a 65-year healthy farmer who met with a road traffic accident and sustained severe injury to his right upper limb for which he was brought to hospital and underwent an amputation.
A week later when he was sitting up in bed, eating his dinner and gearing up to go home, he experienced sudden severe chest pain and sweating. An emergency angiography done within hours, as he was luckily in hospital, showed blockage in all the three coronary arteries of his heart. A very able cardiac surgeon and his team performed a coronary bypass surgery.
Within a week he started to recover from this second major procedure, and was getting ready to go home.
After a week while recovering but still in hospital, he suddenly started pouring blood from his intestines with fall in blood pressure, quite out of the blue. He required resuscitation with several blood transfusions while a colonoscopy examination and CT scan showed bleeding from out-pouching blebs from the intestine called diverticuli. As his bleeding was profuse and continuous, he had to undergo yet another operation, this time to remove a segment of his bowel.
He made it this time too, having received 60 units of blood transfusion and ICU care for 40 days.
What was indeed perplexing was that every time one major health problem seemed to be settling after a surgery on one organ, this patient developed a new severe problem in another. And they did not seem related, that is, they seemed de novo, not like a complication of the intervention that had occurred a week earlier.
As though he was “destined” not to go home, he developed bad chest congestion and died, this time due to his multiple procedures and interventions!
And to be fair, “luck” works the other way too…a sick elderly person with severe shock occasionally do come back to the surprise of the ICU staff, but these pleasant surprises are less frequent.
Doctors, although many may not admit it, often do believe in “Lady Luck”. While we try to to diminish the “luck” factor with science, technology, skills checklists and methods, we often need it to explain things that science cannot quite explain.
Many surgeons do say their “prayers” before starting complicated surgeries, or are superstitious about a cat crossing the road for example. Several ICU nurses or doctors consider some beds as “unlucky”. And most wards do not have a bed numbered 13.
One may laugh at “luck”, but science may not have all the answers that doctors seek.
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