He has to use a motorized cart because of his fat ass…look at his picture, after gastric bypass and bleeding…his chin has not even started to show any.

That has nothing to do with the likelyhood of the complication, but a great deal to do with the likelihood of the patient suing over a complication.

It amazes me that some surgeons, otherwise capable and competent, have a mental block against understanding the difference between the consent form and informed consent, and the different levels, some unconscious at which people say “yes” and how that impacts the doctor-patient relationship their management of post-operative events. Not all surgeons, or even most, but some. It must be something about their “theory of mind” just not ecompassing ambiguity.

Most of the population does not believe that.

Why on earth is Weis focusing on the speed of the pre-surgery work-up before the bypass? I have seen plenty of patients with first-day-consult, second-day-pretesting, third-day-operation. At least a third of those were elective operations, most of them baratric. The workups are used to rule out preexisting heart/pulm issues, find hiatal hernias, and prove that the patient is psychologically stable and understanding of the post-surgery nutritional needs.

None of this seems to bear on his unfortunate case. Leaks happen even with the best of surgeons, and have nothing to do with how fast the pretesting was done. Perhaps if he ordered them to do the surgery in half an hour rather than two, I’d believe him.

The fact that he’s concentrating on something as ridiculous as the pre-surgery EEG suggests he has no case. Any real malpractice suit would have already ordered up six witnesses to “prove” that the 30-hour hold on surgery was a violation of standard of care.

I have no idea if it was malpractice with no access to the facts. However, given Weis’s new strategy, my sympathies lie entirely with the surgeons.