Music Bingo Distracts Surgery Team

In February 2023 at InSight Surgery Center in Lone Tree, Colorado, 56-year-old Bart Writer stopped breathing during a routine cataract surgery while surgeon C. Starck Johnson and anesthesiologist Michael Urban were playing a “music bingo” game based on 1970s and 1980s songs. A malpractice suit later alleged that a vital signs monitor had been turned off, so no audible alarm warned the team that Writer was no longer breathing, and he was pronounced dead shortly afterward, with an autopsy citing cardiac arrest. The case was eventually settled out of court.

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