A 72-year-old woman undergoing routine knee surgery at Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital Midtown in Nashville is left with no sensation from her chest down after an apparent drug mix-up during anesthesia, according to reporting from multiple outlets.
One source says the mother-in-law of the patient noticed paralysis after the procedure on Friday and that doctors reportedly used the wrong medication during the perioperative period. Another outlet reports that the incident affects not only the patient but also three other patients at the facility, suggesting the error may involve how anesthesia drugs were prepared or administered. The accounts characterize the event as a mix-up involving anesthesia or related medication rather than complications from the surgery itself.
Both articles frame the episode as an unexpected outcome following a standard orthopedic procedure and describe serious neurologic injury consistent with a loss of sensation after anesthesia. The reports differ in the details they emphasize—such as how many patients were affected and the specific framing of the medications involved—but they agree on the core facts: the setting, the timing, the suspected drug mix-up, and the resulting paralysis.
