Euro Care

Hurry up and wait, or die. Whichever comes first:

MADRID – A woman discovered by chance during a visit to her doctor that her husband had a malignant tumour in his prostate.

After tests for prostate cancer in June last year, the husband was told he would have to wait for the results until October 2007.

Despite his worries, the man was told by authorities this was normal.

When his wife went to see her doctors about something different, she asked him if her husband’s results had come through.

The doctor checked the results which showed he had a cancerous tumour in his prostate.

And, if you do get treatment you might get a surprise:

AMSTERDAM – Operation room personnel at hospitals fail to check adequately whether instruments or bandages have been left in the body of a patient after an operation. Employees of the Catharina hospital in EIndhoven and the University hospital in Maatricht have concluded this in an article in the medical journal Medisch Contact on Friday.

....About a third (28 percent) of the hospitals have protocols for counting instruments. The researchers say that it has emerged that the small instruments are often counted, but the large clamps are forgotten and regularly left inside patients.