Doctors suspended after injecting wrong drug into spine

Abstract

Two doctors at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham have been suspended and could face manslaughter charges over an injection mix-up that has left a patient close to death. A teenager with leukaemia has had the anticancer drug vincristine injected into his spine instead of via the correct route—into a vein. The same mistake has caused 10 previous deaths in Britain. The blunder happens because vincristine is given in conjunction with an intrathecal drug and doctors mix up the two, although the packaging for vincristine warns that the drug is fatal if injected into the spine. The patient's only chance of survival is if …