Four patients walked into a Nashville hospital for routine joint replacements and left catastrophically harmed after a pharmacy error sent the wrong drug into their spines.
Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital Midtown has admitted that a medication mistake on 14 August 2026 caused four joint-replacement patients to receive potassium phosphate instead of an anaesthetic, and its chief executive has issued a public apology.
At least one woman, 72-year-old Glenda Dorton, has been left paralysed from the chest down, while a second patient was placed on a ventilator, according to her family and local reporting.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and state health regulators have opened inquiries into how a supposedly routine surgery turned into one of the worst hospital safety failures the city has seen.
The Pharmacy Error at the Heart of the Case
The hospital has now given its own account of what went wrong. In a statement, Ascension Saint Thomas said a medication error inside the Midtown pharmacy led to four joint-replacement patients receiving potassium phosphate rather than mepivacaine, the anaesthetic they were meant to be given, on 14 August. All four suffered adverse reactions and were given immediate medical care.
The families tell a similar story with different drug names. Relatives of Glenda Dorton told NewsChannel 5 Investigates, which first reported the incident, that she was given potassium instead of the local anaesthetic bupivacaine during spinal anaesthesia for a knee replacement.
The discrepancy between the hospital's reference to mepivacaine and the family's to bupivacaine has not been publicly reconciled, though both accounts agree that a potassium compound was injected in place of a numbing agent.
Medical specialists say the consequences of such an error are predictable and severe. Potassium salts are never meant to be injected into the spinal space, and doing so can attack nerve tissue directly.
The mistake, in the words of one surgeon not involved in the case, amounts to the drug destroying the spinal cord, an outcome consistent with the paralysis Dorton's family has described.
An Apology, an Investigation and New Safeguards
The apology came from the top of the hospital. Dr Shubhada Jagasia, president and chief executive of Ascension Saint Thomas Midtown, said in a statement shared with Becker's Hospital Review, 'Our hearts are with the four patients and their families impacted by this event. On behalf of our leadership and care teams, I am deeply sorry for the harm caused to our patients.'
The hospital said it reported the event to state regulators and launched an investigation the day it occurred.
State authorities moved quickly. The Tennessee Healthcare Facilities Commission alerted the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation on the evening of 14 August, and the TBI confirmed it had opened an investigation.
Commission staff are on site examining complaints and coordinating with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the hospital says it has hired independent quality experts to validate its response.
Ascension has also detailed the changes it has made since the error. According to the hospital's statement, high-alert medications including mepivacaine are now kept in separate, distinctly marked storage, and any spinal-medication scan alert must trigger a mandatory hard stop resolved through independent verification.
A comprehensive review, the hospital said, confirmed that no patients beyond the four were affected.
A Family Left Waiting for Answers
For the Dorton family, the corrective measures offer little comfort. Kristina Dorton, the patient's daughter-in-law, told local reporters that Glenda woke from anaesthesia with burning and itching and a complete loss of feeling in her legs, and that the 72-year-old remains in intensive care with paralysis diagnosed from around the mid-chest down.
The knee replacement itself, the family noted, had gone well; it was everything after that went wrong.
The scale of the harm has drawn the attention of malpractice lawyers, though no lawsuit has yet been reported.
One attorney not connected to the case described the sequence as evidence of a shortcut somewhere along the chain that allowed the wrong drug to reach the syringes, the kind of breakdown that hospital protocols on labelling and verification are designed to prevent.
The hospital has cited patient privacy in declining to describe the conditions of the other three, one of whom families told reporters was placed on a ventilator, leaving the full extent of the injuries unclear as the investigations continue.
A routine operation meant to restore movement has instead taken it away, and the families are left waiting to learn whether any of it can be undone.
