An 85-year-old woman who entered a Hong Kong hospital for a procedure to relieve a cancer-related bowel obstruction died weeks later after a surgeon mistakenly operated on the wrong organ, an error that investigators later described as the result of confirmation bias.
The woman, who was being treated for obstructive sigmoid colon cancer, was admitted to Tseung Kwan O Hospital in February for a transverse colostomy, a procedure to divert a section of the large intestine through an opening in the abdomen to bypass a blockage.
