Operation Confusion

What every hospital dreads most is a mixup of patients' charts, which may lead to the wrong treatment or operation. Thanks to elaborate precautions, it rarely happens. But in Chattanooga's Federal District Court last week, attorneys filed a gruesome complaint asserting that Harrell F. Huggins had-been a double victim of wrong surgery in just such a mixup.

Huggins, 55, a railway electrician of Chattanooga, had long suffered from hemorrhoids, eventually agreed to have them removed on Sept. 3 by Dr. Charles Jackson Ray in Chattanooga's Memorial Hospital, a Roman Catholic institution run by the Nazareth Literary and Benevolent Institute. Huggins was admitted the day before. So was Bill Slater, scheduled to undergo operation by Dr. Joseph W. Graves for correction of a hernia and removal of a diseased left testicle. In the morning, each patient got preliminary anesthetic, and was trundled off to the operating rooms. One room was reserved for Dr. Ray, one for Dr. Graves. That, said Plaintiff Huggins, was where things went wrong: he was sent with Patient Slater's chart to Dr. Graves's operating room, while Slater got Huggins' chart and went to Dr. Ray's theater.

Both surgeons were a bit late, Huggins charges, and neither took the time to identify the draped figure on his operating table as his own patient. What especially outrages Huggins is that although he insists it was obvious that he had no hernia, Surgeon Graves cut into his abdomen to correct one, and although he had no testicular disease, his left testicle was removed.

For the resultant "pain and mental anguish" plus lost wages (he is still not back at work), Huggins' suit demands a jury trial and $450,000 damages from Dr. Graves and the hospital owners.

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