Woman doctor linked to 1500 patient deaths

[LiviaOlivia]

Sydney Morning Herald
February 22, 2004

Authorities in Germany arrested a respected hospital physician yesterday in what is being called the biggest criminal medical investigation in postwar German history - possibly involving 1500 morphine deaths.

Investigators in Hanover said Dr Mechthild Bach was being held in connection with the death of eight patients under her care at a pain clinic at the well-known Paracelsus Hospital in suburban Hanover. But they said they had also confiscated the records of 76 clinic patients who died under unusual circumstances.

<snip>

However, Der Spiegel news magazine referred to the investigation on Friday as "one of the biggest criminal probes" in German post-war history. Der Spiegel said Bach could be linked to 251 patient deaths between January 2000 and last July, and to as many as 1500 deaths since 1982.

Mr Klinge cautioned against such speculation, saying: "The suspect correctly treated many terminally ill cancer patients with morphine, we know that. And there is no evidence indicating that the number of unsolved deaths is anywhere near 1500 at this point." So far, records of 11 patients have been studied by investigators. In eight of those deaths, the patients were not terminally ill but allegedly were nonetheless prescribed high doses of morphine.

DPA



This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/21/1077072897442.html

[Bucky]

1. Police probe? She's a healer. Look, anyone can have a bad run of luck.

I'm sure there's a totally innocent explanation for this. I mean, is 1500 all that big a number anyway?

[Snow]

2. That's one misleading headline, dude....

The commonest cause of cancer death is lung cancer. When you're dying with it, you're suffocating. Suffocation brings on a panic reflex - totally involuntary, can't think your way out of it. So you spend your final days & weeks in helpless panic, or the doc gives you an opiate, like morphine, because opiates stop that panic reflex. You feel at ease & in comfort, and death is much easier. Also, aside from that effect, cancer, even if you're not in the final stages, can hurt like hell, and it often takes very large doses of morphine or something similar - we usually use fentanyl patches in the states - to stop that pain.

[burrowowl]

3. When a friend of mine

was a young nurse, they didn't give a terminally ill cnacer patient enough morphine in time. He blew up, literally, all over the hospital room while still alive, lived for a few minutes. Some life support lasts too long.

[papau]

4. fentanyl patches are God's gift - morphine just makes you shorter of

breath - a drowning feeling.

But why do 75 mg 3 day patches only work for 2 days - and why do they cost so much?


A bit of a rip-off.

:-)

[demgrrrll]

5. I am so damn old I remember Brompton's cocktails which I believe are

a mixture of heroin or morphine, cocaine and alcohol. It seems that there was something else in the mix that required the pharmacist to wear a hood while mixing the medicine. This med was given to people who were in extreme pain.

[papau]

6. yep - the 50's/60's drug w/qualudes

cocaine, heroin or methodone or morphine, alcohol and an antinausea med - and it was on the floor rather than locked up in the narcotics.

In the seventies it moved from the cancer ward to the rock scene!

That was back when we were young - and knew we would live forever!

peace

:-)

[Malva Zebrina]

7. On a case that I attended

while a home care nurse, I was advised over the phone to give a fatal does of morphine to a terminally ill cancer patient.

Naturally, I did not. I disobeyed.

These things do occur.

That is why I think there needs to be some consideration given to the desires of patients who know they are in their last stages.

It should be legal to comply with a patient's wish to be sedated with morhine to the end / or to the death or to cause the death and this would be assisted suicide.

why should a health care worker be involved at all? If this were the law, there would be no one repsonsible at all except the patient who signed the decree.

no need to involve other person who were doing their best ot make the person comfortable in their last days.

[burrowowl]

8. Yes people should make

a living will. I'm sure I'd rather be eased out before the last thing I saw was my gangrenous or putrified organs all over the walls. And the fellow was in very great pain.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

9. I wonder why it was so important

for the headline to read "Woman doctor linked to 1500 patient deaths"?

[Mrs. Overall]

10. Agree! I was just about to pose the same question. n/t

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

11. Is this the face of a killer?

Don't look like one to me. from:
http://www.abendblatt.de/daten/2004/02/20/264406.html