On December 30, 2020, most people are immersed in the joy of welcoming the New Year, but there is one doctor who is not happy.
She is the director of the emergency department of Wuhan Central Hospital, Ai Fen.
Ai Fen made a faint cry for help on Weibo. She said, “I’m a doctor, I never thought of being a medical jerk.”
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In March 2020, Ai Fen was known to the public for her earlier warning message about the new crown outbreak.
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Dr. Effen before surgery
After 10 months, she was in the news again because of a medical accident, and her status changed from doctor to patient. The accident left her almost blind in her right eye.
In the news video, Dr. Affin lost the calm and competent look of her former head of the emergency department, she looked very haggard, especially her right eye, which was obviously smaller than her other eye, and was dull and puffy.
Dr. Effen believes the problem lies in the cataract surgery she underwent last May at Eye Care, saying, “They removed my nearly normal organ to make money.
A doctor on the front line of the epidemic became a victim of medical malpractice in just a few months. How did this tragedy come about?
- From the whistle blower to the “medical malpractice”
The story starts with the epidemic.
She was one of the first doctors to come into contact with the new epidemic.
During the epidemic, she led a 200-person medical team in the emergency department, donned protective clothing, and fought on the front lines for nearly four months in a state of “fighting, falling down, and replenishing”.
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Afraid of infecting her family, Dr. Ai Fen and her husband lived outside and entrusted her sister to take care of her 2-year-old son.
When the epidemic was over, Dr. Affin brought her second child back to her, only to find that her most frequent words had become “the baby wants his sister-in-law”.
As a mother, Dr. Effen was heartbroken.
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Dr. Affin’s family photos on Weibo
Dr. Efen thought that after the epidemic, her life would return to normal and her family would be happy, but she felt that her eyesight was getting worse.
At first, she thought it was because she was constantly looking at screens through goggles and face screens during the epidemic that her vision was deteriorating so quickly.
In May, the epidemic was largely under control, and she was freed up to take care of her health. She called an old acquaintance to inquire about her vision loss. On the other end of the line was a doctor who had retired from a tertiary care hospital and returned to work at Aier Eye.
Over the phone, this doctor then suggested that she go to Aier to get a new lens.
After going to the hospital to see her for a follow-up appointment and having an examination, he determined that she had a mild cataract, and he still recommended that Effen get a new lens. With the introduction of her former colleague, Wang Yong, Vice President of Aier, operated on her, and she paid a total of 29,000 RMB, including the surgery fee.
Having said that, perhaps many people would like to ask this question –
Why didn’t Dr. Effen go to a private hospital instead of her own public tertiary hospital?
In fact, the Wuhan Central Hospital, where Dr. Ai Fen had her eye attack in May, had not yet fully recovered from the outbreak.
Wuhan Central Hospital, especially the ophthalmology department, was hit hard by the epidemic – three ophthalmologists were killed in the line of duty due to the new crown infection.
So Dr. Effen chose to go to Aier Eye, where she had an acquaintance and a reputation.
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But unfortunately, the condition of Dr. Affin’s eyes did not improve after the surgery. She kept telling her doctor that she felt dull in her vision, but it was not taken seriously.
By October, Effen had the darkest moment of her life – the day after she celebrated her 46th birthday, her retina detached and she was almost completely blind in her right eye.
At this point, however, Aier Eye wanted her to return to Wuhan Central Hospital for a remedial retinal surgery.
She asked for a photo of the preoperative examination of her “mild cataract”, but Wang Yong refused, saying, “Not every patient’s photo is kept.
Later, he sent the photo to Ai Fen, but the picture showed a very serious cataract, which did not match what Ai Fen saw on his computer at that time. Effen believed that it was a fake photo that had been manipulated and “definitely not mine.”
After three retinal surgeries, Dr. Affin is now unable to work properly and has to stay home with his second child.
Dr. Effen, who was not broken when she led a charge with 200 people at the beginning of the year, had her whole spirit collapse after the epidemic because of a detached retina.
She was originally a strong person, but now she needs her family to walk with her, and because of the detached retina she cannot exert herself, she will not even be able to pick up her second child in the future.
Dr. Effen’s career is likely to be cut short by this medical incident, and her life will be rewritten as a result.
For her, this was a huge blow.
- “This time, let us help you talk everywhere”
The way Aier Eye treated this matter, with all its practices, forced Dr. Affin to seek help from the media.
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She hopes to solve the many mysteries in her mind.
- why was the decision made to implant her with a lens without any examination in the first place?
- Did the doctor not examine her fundus carefully at all before the operation and did not consider the risk of her high myopia and retinal detachment?
- After the surgery, Effen had reported her blurred vision to the doctor, but did not pay attention to it, so did she miss the best opportunity to remedy the situation?
- Why did she keep covering up and hiding, and was not willing to cooperate in producing the initial diagnostic photos?
Do these above queries indicate that
Effen’s case did not need to be replaced, and the real treatment needed was to strengthen the retina.
–But since the cost of replacing the lens is $29,000, while the cost of laser retinal strengthening is only a few hundred dollars, did Aier Eye Care maliciously induce Ai Fen to buy a lens from the beginning, thus delaying the best time to treat her “retinal detachment”?
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Some netizens suggested on Weibo that Aier Eye Care has incentives to encourage patients to exchange their lenses.
So, is it common for patients to be induced to overspend without regard to their actual condition?
What makes people feel more powerless is that if Dr. Affin, as a medical care worker, encountered such a medical malpractice when she had an acquaintance, in the end, the only way to get attention is to defend her rights to the network; wouldn’t ordinary people who encountered such a thing have to admit their own bad luck?
So Dr. Affin said, “I’m a doctor, never thought of being a medical malpractice, I just want a truth.”
“If I don’t stand up and speak out, even less people will come out and speak up.”
She stood alone to stand up to a huge medical giant, hoping that it would teach them a lesson, prevent it and ensure that a similar tragedy would never happen again.
But chillingly, after the story festered, a group of people began attacking Dr. Affin online.
“You’re going blind, and you’re still brushing Weibo 666 ah.”
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On the line, “as a doctor, for the sake of selfish desire to destroy the big picture of the doctor-patient relationship and undermine social stability”
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“Do you want to kill all private hospitals with a single blow?” “Put the nation’s ophthalmologists to death”
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It’s doctors and it’s patients. Why can’t Affin defend her due rights?
The only way to make irresponsible medical practices pay and to save more ordinary people from harm is to address the issue as it is.
Is this not a big picture, not a contribution to the development of China’s medical industry?
This incident should bring justice to Dr. Affin, and to all those who have had a common experience, and who may experience similar incidents in the future.
“This time, let us help you speak everywhere.”
- Who is to blame for the blind right eye?
With the exposure of Ai Fen’s microblog, media coverage, reply from Aier Eye, and the intervention of ophthalmology professionals, the fog of this medical dispute surrounding the “whistle blower” Ai Fen gradually has the appearance of dispersal.
Here, the first thing that must be admitted is that Ai Fen’s eye problem itself is very complicated: high myopia, history of eye trauma, plus cataract surgery, the probability of retinal detachment in her eye is much higher than that of ordinary patients.
In interviews with relevant media, several ophthalmologists agreed: “Effen’s eventual retinal detachment may be the result of multiple factors superimposed on each other, not necessarily a direct result of Aier Eye’s surgery.”
In the official press release of Aier Ophthalmology, it has always been insisted that “the blindness of Ai Fen’s right eye is not directly related to the surgery”.
But in the latest statement of the person concerned, Ai Fen, this is not the case.
As early as December 29th, Ai Fen contacted Wuhan Aier Eye Hospital’s Vice President Wang Yong to communicate directly about a fatal part of the surgery process that Aier had overlooked – the fundus examination.
“Before doing IOL implantation, you should check the fundus for degeneration before deciding whether to perform the surgery, which is a common sense that ophthalmologists should have. However, you did the IOL implantation without checking the fundus, which delayed the treatment. I now have a detached retina and can only feel light in my right eye, should you be held responsible?”
At that time, the answer given by the other party was still: “The fundus was checked before the surgery, but the check was not thorough enough to detect the degeneration of the fundus and was willing to settle the matter through friendly negotiation.”
Because of the hospital’s negligence, Effen’s eye was treated as a routine cataract surgery.
And if the fundus lesion had been detected in advance and the fundus degeneration had been treated with laser, Effen would not have lost the best time to prevent retinal detachment.
But that’s all just an if.
For Affin, the blindness in her right eye had become irreversible.
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- Why Elle?
“To enable all people, rich or poor, to enjoy the right to eye health.”
This is the introduction in the official website of A-share ophthalmology leading company with a market value of 300 billion yuan, Aier Ophthalmology.
This top “private medical institutions first stock” halo of private eye hospital, in the field of private ophthalmology has a superb position.
The Wuhan Central Hospital where the ophthalmology of three doctors died due to the new crown, ophthalmology has not yet resumed consultation, the recommendation of former colleagues, advanced technology, etc., are the reasons why Dr. Affin chose Aier Eye.
Founded in 2003, Aier Eye was listed on the GEM in 2009. 11 years, from 6.929 billion yuan to 280 billion, Aier Eye market value increased by more than 40 times. On the official website of Aier Eye Care, Aier Eye Care Hospital encompasses myopia surgery, high myopia surgery, cataract, fundus disease, comprehensive eye disease” and other projects.
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“All is not a problem” is also written in the introduction of the relevant diseases
Refractive surgery and cataract surgery are the main sources of revenue for Aier Eye Care – refractive error, or myopia, is a large group, while cataract is a common eye disease among the elderly in China.
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The latest data shows that refractive surgery contributed 35.34% of Aier’s revenue in 2019, with a gross margin of 57.38%; cataract contributed 17.62% of revenue, with a gross margin of 40.1%.
In addition, Aier’s advanced medical equipment allows Aier to provide patients with advanced medical services that are no less than, or even more cost-effective than, those provided by tertiary hospitals.
According to the official website of Aier, Aier Eye Care’s annual outpatient volume in mainland China exceeds 10 million visits. The large number of routine surgical operations has led to the development of an efficient and mature treatment model, which is also known as “cost-effective” assembly-line operations. This routine operation, which doctors are accustomed to and have inherent experience in, is prone to the risk of overlooking individual cases when treating patients with complex eye conditions.
As an example of the complexity of the situation, the medical dispute between Affin and Eyre revealed exactly this problem.
When the individual case encountered the efficient and procedural assembly line operation of ophthalmology, the neglected fundus examination and the eye disease that was treated as a routine cataract surgery finally combined to lead to the tragedy of Ai Fen’s blindness in her right eye.
- After the tragedy
Under the dispute between Ai Fen and Aier, netizen @XiaoLuylgms shared an experience of outpatient clinic with her mentor during her postgraduate days.
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In the outpatient clinic, her mentor always took great pains to catch patients with high myopia over for dilated pupils to look at the fundus and see retinal degeneration, and overtime to get the laser hit.
The 5:00 clinic always took until 7:00 to finish. But the tutor herself is very pleased because she feels she has eliminated another bad possibility for her patients. Then the mentor would also teach the students that patients with high myopia must not be let go easily and must have their fundus looked at, or else the retina will detach later, which is a pity for both the patient and the doctor.
With a dedicated mentor as a role model, Xiao Lu believes that the routine operation of looking at the fundus with a dilated pupil has nothing to do with technical knowledge, but is a matter of pure medical ethics – the operation of looking at the fundus with a dilated pupil is time consuming, and there is no money to be made, and in some special cases, it is necessary for the doctor to look under the mirror a little bit, testing the doctor’s responsibility and patience.
As for why so persistent, it is because “every detail is secretly for the patient to do their best, is in the decades of experience seen a variety of regret to develop the habit.”
Perhaps, the fault and problems of Aier Eye in the medical dispute with Affin, is not so big, and the strength of Aier Eye in the field of ophthalmology is not in doubt.
But as an individual case of complex eye conditions, the medical dispute of Ai Fan precisely exposed the problem of routine, assembly-line operation and neglect of the risk of complex individual cases of disease in Aier Ophthalmology.
Ai Fen is not the first person to suffer a tragedy, but there have been cases similar to Ai Fen’s in past medical disputes at Aier. In a popular Weibo retweet, a family member painfully spoke of their family’s past.
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And on China’s Judgment Instrument website, Phoenix WEEKLY Finance reporter searched and found 31 medical dispute cases related to Aier Eye Hospital.
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As a listed professional eye hospital, Aier is undoubtedly the first choice of many people for eye care. Relying on advertising and word-of-mouth, the number of people who choose Aier Eye Hospital each year exceeds ten million. This rate of medical disputes may be within the “reasonable” range of the industry, but behind every hint of negligence on the part of a doctor, there may be a pair of eyes that were buried, a vast world that was lost, and a good life that could have been had.
We look forward to a clearer investigation of this dispute, not only the “right” and “wrong”, but also the innovation of medical process and system; not only for Affin, but also for more ordinary people.
Reference
Eight points of health news: “whistle blower” Affin Aier’s rights, not a simple medical dispute 2021-1-4
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