Say you’re having major surgery, like installing some new ribs, and half way through the surgery, while your chest is wide open, the surgeon just leaves. Like he just decides to go home and leave you there.
Eventually you’ll wake up, right? You’ll wake up with your chest open, probably in a lot of pain.
Would you die? If you manage to stay calm and just lie there patiently, how long could you survive? Besides something like an infection, what would be the things that could kill you in that situation?
Everyone here saying that there would be someone else to stitch you up, I think what OP meant was more of a “everyone in the room vanishes and you’re left alone” type of question.
Yep.
And the result would be varying very much depending on the surgery.
Open heart surgery? You’re done.
Knee surgery? A good amount of pain, but maybe fine.
‘Fine’ is a stretch. I don’t think I can sew myself good enough to prevent infection and gangrene.
Assuming all the power and filtration systems stay on, you’d actually be in a pretty sterile environment. If you did your best and put a lot of clean bandages on it, I feel like you have a good chance of avoiding infection.
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I don’t know the full answer, but the surgeon would not be the only doctor in the room. There would at least be an anesthesiologist, and supporting nurses.
There would be a resident that could close you up, but maybe skip the discount surgeon with his degree from Hollywood Upstairs Medical School.
The knee bone’s connected to the … something. The something’s connected to the … red thing. The red thing’s connected to my … wristwatch. Uh-oh
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I think a more serious and probable question is what would happen if your doctor had a heart attack during surgery. Doesn’t take a degree from Hollywood Upstairs Medical School for that to happen!
I would imagine there is a contingency plan for if the surgeon becomes incapacitated, eg has an aneurysm/heart attack, so they’d probably do whatever that is
Probably something like palliative care until an on call surgeon can come in and finish out whatever was going on
Palliative care? That’s not what palliative care is.
What is palliative care? Palliative care is specialized medical care for people living with a serious illness, such as cancer or heart failure. Patients in palliative care may receive medical care for their symptoms, or palliative care, along with treatment intended to cure their serious illness. Palliative care is meant to enhance a person’s current care by focusing on quality of life for them and their family.
https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/what-are-palliative-care-and-hospice-care#palliative
Palliative just means relieving symptoms without dealing with the cause of the condition. In this example they might administer medication to lower a spiking heart rate without dealing with the obvious causal factor of the unfinished surgery bc they are not qualified to do so. This would be palliative in nature.
That said “palliative care” is a sub speciality in its own right as you describe
There would be some other doctor in the hospital that would sew you back up, that surgeon would go to jail for a while, you’d be on the news, win massive lawsuit.
The OR staff will make sure someone else comes in to close you up. Surgeries aren’t done alone by the surgeon.
The anesthesiologist will not just let you wake up like that.
Unless you’re having a backyard surgery done by some wack job, this will never happen.
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Then chances are good I probably won’t have any worries?
You know, there are actually a lot of lousy surgeons out there. Usually not at major hospitals, but at very small, rural, or poor hospitals. These hospitals struggle to attract talent, and these surgeons have usually left better positions in disgrace. It’s a match made in hell.
