A man in his 90s sought urgent care for numbness and tingling in his legs. Examination and treatment at the emergency room in Lund dragged on and the man was paralyzed, reports say South Sweden.
The medical injury could probably have been avoided, the hospital states in a Lex Maria report.
A doctor examined the man, but the high workload in the emergency room meant that the supplementary examinations were carried out a day later. The examination showed a suspected cancerous tumor pressing on the spine, but urgent surgery was not considered appropriate.
The man had sought help at the emergency room for the same thing a month earlier, but was then deemed to be well enough that the investigation was deemed to be possible via primary care.
“The delay meant that the man’s spinal cord was damaged and he was paralyzed from the waist down,” Skåne University Hospital writes in a press release.
In addition, the paralysis “could have been avoided if investigation and treatment had been done a month earlier”, according to the hospital.