Injection of Toxic Liquid Leaves Patient Comatose

MIAMI —  A retired newspaper photographer who went into the hospital to have a facial cancer removed was left in a coma today after doctors accidentally injected him with a toxic substance used to preserve tissues removed during surgery, hospital officials said.

Bob East, 64, a former award-winning photographer at The Miami Herald, was pronounced brain dead Monday morning at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

“I know nobody did this on purpose,” said East’s wife, Tina. “It just fills me with such terrible rage. I think that people who take other people’s lives into their hands should be more careful.”

The lead surgeon agreed.

“It was preventable,” Dr. James Ryan Chandler said. “It didn’t have to be. It was a tragic series of human errors. It is due to the errors of many--doctors, myself included, who somehow bypassed all the safeguards to prevent such an occurrence.”

The injection was given Friday during facial surgery. An eye doctor left an unmarked bottle of glutaldehyde in the operating room. The substance was supposed to be used to preserve East’s cancerous eye tissue, which was to be donated for research purposes.

But an anesthesiologist mistook the substance for spinal fluid and injected it into East’s spine.

East’s blood pressure and pulse began to drop “within minutes,” Hill said, but none of the operating room personnel realized that the mistake had been made until nearly an hour later when the eye doctor returned and asked where the glutaldehyde was.