A number of medical negligence and medical malpractice cases over the last couple of years have been centered on medical mistakes by medical professionals due to the use of wrong tubes in medical procedures. One recent case, published in the New York Times, highlights the real danger of this problem in hospitals.

A 35-week pregnant woman began feeling ill with consistent vomiting and weight loss, as a result her doctor hospitalized her and ordered that she be fed through a tube until the baby was born. While tending to the woman, hospital staff mixed up the tubes and instead of snaking a tube through the woman's nose into her stomach, the nurse connected the liquid-food bag to a tube that entered the woman's vein.

As a result of the mix-up, the woman and her baby died shortly after. The family of the woman filed a medical malpractice suit against the hospital and was given an undisclosed settlement. The Times believes this is "a mistake stemmed from years of lax federal oversight of medical devices...putting such food directly into the bloodstream is like pouring concrete down a drain."

These deaths are only a few of the hundreds of death or serious injuries that can be traced back to tube mix-ups. These types of mistakes are rarely reported, similar to medication errors, and the real toll of these types of errors is fairly unknown. According to a 2006 survey of hospitals, nearly 16 percent had experienced a feeding tube mix-up.

Experts and standards boards have advocated since 1996 that tubes for different functions become incompatible with each other as to avoid these types of mix-ups. However, the medical-device companies and approval from the Food and Drug Administration has not been so quick to act.

Source: New York Times "U.S. Inaction Lets Look-Alike Tubes Kill Patients" 08/20/2010