Yes. I’ve been in a lot of operating rooms for a lot of different surgeries. It’s also common to give antibiotics before a surgery…and wear surgical masks… which is my point, also in the context of COVID masks still work to reduce the spread of a virus. Antibiotics will not work against a virus.

Yes, please make sure if you have surgery you tell your surgeon “no need to wear a mask, just a helmet and some knee pads”.

I’m on mobile so the article is blocking me from reading it but really wish I could because this seems like a very interesting situation.

The main questions I have are, how many people were involved in her care? Was the surgery responsible for the surgery and anesthesia or was an anesthesiologist present? How long was she in cardiac arrest? If not and what type of resuscitation was needed? did he fail to administer adequate vasopressors or not recognize that she needed them or that she went into cardiac arrest?

Depending on the answers this could vary from any time in jail is unreasonable to life in jail is reasonable.

Anesthesia is VERY risky. It is routine for people to go into cardiac arrest during very routine and standard anesthesia for routine procedures, that’s what anesthesiologists do every day… but without more information I can say death is a very real possibility from any anesthesia, if she went into cardiac arrest and was resuscitated then okay, that situation is something the surgeon should be able to handle and any attempt to transfer her somewhere before she is stable would violate EMTALA (in the US). If she didn’t then it is a risk of not waking up after anesthesia that needs to be explained and understood before undergoing any anesthesia. But if she went or remained hypotensive for too long that was not treated causing brain damage that’s more malpractice than manslaughter.

Additionally, EMS is generally not trained or equipped handle patients in this situation. Depending on how progressive the system is, they might be able to manage but being transferred from surgery that required resuscitation makes her a critical care patient, which leads me to understand why a doctor would be hesitant to handoff the patient. I say this as a paramedic who specializes in critical care transport that has dealt with many doctors that were hesitant to transfer care to me.

Wish I could read the article to form an opinion on this because if she stayed alive for 14 months I really would like to see how they connected that to him. I know alive can mean she has a pulse but no neurological activity but again that seems more like a malpractice situation rather than a criminal one. But oh well.

Yes, pain is pain. People can still feel it and suffer even if they do not remember it. Anesthesia in context of surgery is too complex of a topic for me to comment on but I do frequently manage patients that are sedated, on ventilators either going to or coming from surgery. There are different scales and tools we use to assess if someone is under sedated or in pain. Keeping explanations simple pain can reflect as changes in vital signs, rigid or tense muscles, facial expressions. Sedation in the context I’m referring to is more a scale of either how awake someone is or what type of stimulation they respond to, for example do they open their eyes if someone says their name? Or do they open their eyes if I gently tap on their shoulder or do I need to put pressure on their nail bed for them to respond, if they respond at all. If they’re sedated enough they won’t remember the pain but they would still feel pain. Again this is NOT referring to general anesthesia during surgery, that is too complex and anesthesiologist have a very difficult job ensuring people are adequately medicated for surgery while also ensuring that they treat the side effects of the anesthesia medications so they don’t just kill people.

The two do have some overlap and my previous statement assumes no chemical paralysis. There are also times where it is acceptable to just sedate someone, or do something emergent without sedation and then giving something like Versed which causes retrograde amnesia. The person may have been fully conscious and felt everything that just happened but still won’t remember it.

This is a bit of an oversimplification but I’d say firing of the nerves is pain. I don’t have literature available to support but I know giving babies anesthesia is very dangerous so I would like to believe that the reasons you listed where just an over simplified “it’s really okay to do X or Y because they won’t remember it” rather than explaining to a parent in a way that they would truly understand the risk of anesthesia for a baby AND still allow whatever procedure to be done or force a parent to knowingly elect to put their baby through pain and suffering for a procedure. But again, not a doctor and I don’t work with people/babies during surgery