71yo man met a painful end after surgeon decided to put a screwdriver in his spine

A shocking case of medical malpractice made headlines in 2001 after a routine spinal fusion surgery at Hilo Medical Center in Hawaii took a devastating turn. During the operation, surgeon Dr. Robert Ricketson discovered that the required titanium rods were missing, and, improvised by using the shaft of a screwdriver instead.

The patient, 71-year-old Arturo Iturralde, never recovered, and the incident later became one of the most infamous examples of surgical negligence in U.S. medical history.

What happened to Arturo Iturralde?

Iturralde suffered from a serious back condition that made his spine unstable, leading to weakness in his legs and frequent falls. Through the hospital, his doctor, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Robert Ricketson, ordered a special spinal repair kit from the medical company Medtronic, including two titanium rods meant to stabilize Iturralde’s spine during surgery.

On January 29, 2001, surgical staff at Hilo Medical Center began the procedure, though a nurse warned that the contents of the surgical kit had not been verified. More than two hours into the operation, when it was time to secure the rods to Iturralde’s spine, the team discovered that both titanium rods were missing.

The rods were only 90 minutes away

Citing risk of keeping the patient under anesthesia during the delay, Dr. Ricketson chose instead to cut the sterile stainless-steel shaft of a screwdriver to approximate the diameter of the missing rods and implanted it into Iturralde’s spine. As was later presented in court, replacement rods could have been flown in from Honolulu in about 90 minutes.

Days later, the makeshift surgeon-implant failed: the screwdriver shaft snapped inside the patient’s back, causing further complications. Iturralde underwent multiple additional surgeries, became paraplegic, suffered repeated infections and catheterization dependency, and died of urosepsis in 2003.

According to NBC News, in March 2006, a jury found Dr. Ricketson and Hilo Medical Center liable and awarded $5.6 million to Iturralde’s family. Ricketson never informed Iturralde that a screwdriver had been implanted in his spine instead of titanium rods. Instead, a nurse retrieved the broken part from the trash and took it to an attorney.

Moreover, scrutiny of Hilo Medical Center’s credentialing process revealed Dr. Ricketson had prior narcotics-related disciplinary actions in Oklahoma and Texas, yet had been granted surgical privileges in Hawaii just months before the incident.