Table 4 Case illustration: overlapping surgery

On August 7, 2012, Tony Meng, a financial analyst and father of two from Westwood, Massachusetts, underwent a cervical corpectomy performed by Dr. Kirkham Wood, an experienced and respected orthopaedic spine surgeon at MGH. Mr. Meng was Dr. Wood's second case of the day. Meng was put to sleep at 8 am just after Woods started his first case. During Meng's case, Wood made six trips in and out of the operating room as he also attended to the first patient. While performing Meng's corpectomy, the monitoring signals faded and at 1:30 pm, all muscle responses were lost. Following the corpectomy, Wood went back to his first case and then returned to Meng's case to perform cervical laminectomies on him. Meng's case was finished at 7:30 pm, at which time Wood went on to his third case of the day. An MRI done on Meng late in the evening showed the cervical spinal cord at an acute angle, and he was returned to surgery after midnight where a large anterior dural defect was found and repaired. Meng is now quadraparetic and wheelchair bound.

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