California Surgeon On Probation For Removing Wrong Kidney

A California surgeon who allegedly removed the wrong kidney from a
federal inmate has been placed on probation by the state medical
board. UPIhas more:

The California Medical Board ruled Dr. Charles Coonan Streit, a
urologist who has had a license to practice for 41 years, committed
"an extreme departure from the standard of care" when he relied on his
memory and removed a healthy kidney from the 59-year-old federal
inmate at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton in 2012.

The board said the error put the patient's "future renal function in
jeopardy" and forced him to undergo a second surgery to remove the
cancer-stricken kidney.

The hospital was fined $100,000 by the state Department of Health
after an investigation found CT scans showing the affected kidney had
been left in the office of a surgical team doctor on the day of the
surgery.

Streit was placed on probation for three years and ordered to enroll
in a wrong-site surgery class at the University of California-San
Diego School of Medicine within 60 days. He was also banned from
supervising physician assistants for the duration of his probation.

A 2006 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association
suggested wrong-site surgeries are rare, occurring an estimated once
every five to 10 years at large hospitals.