Removing a splinter from a finger can usually be quickly achieved with a pair of tweezers or a needle. But for Rexy Yeung Lok-sze, even a high-frequency electric current was not enough to get a speck of prawn shell out of her thumb; it left her with a painful and long-lasting injury.
The current was applied by a doctor in a procedure known as electrocautery, which burns away soft tissue. In Yeung's case, it removed the tissue but not the sesame seed-sized piece of shell which another doctor removed 11 days later - with a needle.
By that time the injury from the original treatment had developed an infection, which persisted for a year and left Yeung with a tender thumb but no visible scars.
At a Medical Council disciplinary hearing yesterday, chairman Felice Lieh Mak said William Cheng Kin-keung had shown a high degree of recklessness in using electrocautery on Yeung. 'It is an invasive procedure which should only be resorted to where the patient's condition indicates,' she said.
Not only did Cheng wound his patient unnecessarily, but he performed the procedure in the wrong place. The wound, as the second doctor found, was 'some distance' away from the site of the foreign object.
Cheng, who did not appear, pleaded guilty through a lawyer to two counts of professional misconduct for inappropriate use of electrocautery and failure to perform it in the right place.
