31 Jul 2018

Man not told he would have implant of dead person's bone

10:45 am on 31 July 2018

A man who had a transplant of bone tissue from a dead person, and hadn't been told, needed psychiatric help afterwards to help him forget the ordeal.

human body backache and back pain with an upper torso body skeleton showing the spine and vertebral column in red

Stock photo. Photo: 123RF

The case from 2016 is detailed in a report by the Health and Disability Commissioner.

The man had persistent neck pain after an accident in 2013 and was recommended spinal surgery to relieve the pressure on his neck by an orthopaedic surgeon in Auckland.

The 61-year-old patient said he was told at two separate appointments that bone shavings from his hip would be placed between the vertebrae in his neck.

No information was recorded in the medical records about the orthopaedic surgeon's intention to use an allograft - a procedure where human material is transplanted from one person to another.

The orthopedic surgeon, who has not been named in the report, said he did not recall what he told the patient. The surgeon did not make any record of the conversations.

The consenting surgeon failed to inform the man that donated material was intended to be used in his surgery and they should have clarified the details of the procedure with the orthopaedic surgeon, the report said.

Following the operation, the patient asked three times why he did not have a sore hip and the consenting surgeon "talked around the subject".

A few months later, the patient asked the orthopaedic surgeon at the outpatient clinic why he did not have any hip pain and was told he'd been given bone material from a dead person.

The patient needed to see a psychologist following the operation "to assist him on how to forget that he has someone else's bone in his neck."

The health watchdog found that the orthopaedic surgeon failed to provide the man with sufficient information about the proposed treatment and was ordered to apologise.

Read the full report here.

The case has led to changes to Auckland District Health Board policy.

At the time of the patient's surgery, the DHB did not require consent for the use of donated human material, if it carried no risk.

The Health and Disability Commissioner directed the DHB to change its informed consent policy, and the DHB now requires explicit consent for the use of material taken from another person's body.