4 ms·

Neil Armstrong’s Death, and a Stormy, Secret $6M Settlement

65 points by mhb 7y ago

Juan_Largearm 7y ago
Paywalled
- mellosouls 7y ago
  Yup, tho I can access it ok without an account. Limit I guess. Alternative here: https://time.com/5633280/neil-armstrong-estate-6-million-settlement/ https://time.com/5633280/neil-armstrong-estate-6-million-set...
  - Juan_Largearm 7y ago
    Perfect, thank you very much
- keenmaster 7y ago
  If you’re using Safari, Reader View can bypass the NYT paywall.
mellosouls 7y ago
Sad footnote to one of the greatest of lives.
opwieurposiu 7y ago
Korolev is also rumored to have died due to hospital error: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Death
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/hdGqi http://archive.is/hdGqi
redlizard 7y ago
“If it was me, I would try medical therapy first, but it depends on how severe the pain is,” Dr. Mack said. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/neil-armstrong-heart-surgery.html?module=inline https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/neil-armstrong-hea... If someone was 82, and a quality-of-life surgery is elected to be performed, it is always the patient and the doctors making that decision. Surgeries can go wrong, they carry risk, heart surgery more so, heart surgery with an 82 year old even more so. Should we be holding the health care system accountable? Even when the risks are known? Do we all of a sudden have the expectation that every open heart surgery will be successful and no one will die? Hospitals shouldn't be rewarded for failures, but placing full blame on an organization with an impossible mandate seems a little bit unfair.
- dandelany 7y ago
  Based on the details in both articles, this seems like a mischaracterization. The issue is not the fact that he died after an inherently risky operation - it's that the doctors (allegedly) made mistakes afterward that unnecessarily increased the risk and potentially cost him his life. "Do patients always die if wire removal causes bleeding? No — it is very rare, surgeons said. Patients should be rushed to the operating room ... But Mr. Armstrong was taken to a cardiac catheterization lab first, before he went to surgery. The cath lab, Dr. Haft said, 'is not the solution.' ... By the time Mr. Armstrong got to the operating room, his heart had stopped and he had brain damage from a lack of blood to his brain. He died without regaining consciousness." "The expert reviews focus on the hospital’s decision to bring Mr. Armstrong to a catheterization lab rather than directly to an operating room when he began to experience complications. 'The decision to go to the cath lab was THE major error,' Dr. Joseph Bavaria, a vice-chair of cardiothoracic surgery at University of Pennsylvania wrote in a review conducted at the request of the Armstrong family."
- Spooky23 7y ago
  As someone who lost a loved one to cdiff and mrsa infections, I would hope to expect a basic level of competence in a hospital, which is increasingly not there.
  - 7y ago
curiousgal 7y ago
> In a scorching July 2014 email to the hospital’s lawyers, Wendy R. Armstrong, a lawyer and the wife of Mr. Armstrong’s son Mark, noted that Mark and his brother, Rick, would soon be traveling to Florida to speak at a ceremony marking the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing. “This event at Kennedy Space Center will receive national news coverage,” Wendy Armstrong wrote. “Rick and Mark have been solicited by several book writers and filmmakers for ‘information about Neil that no one already knows.’” The lawyer suggested that unless the parties reached a quick settlement, the hospital would be publicly criticized for giving lethally flawed care to one of America’s most famous and revered public figures. Well that's nice, a touch of blackmail is always nice. Regardless of the care being flawed, he was 82 years old! It's hard not to paint the family as opportunistic and greedy.
dfeojm-zlib 7y ago
A similar situation happened to my grandfather: a hospital's medical error caused pneumonia and wrecked his lungs. He could've lived another 10-15 years because he was relatively healthy. He wasn't Neil Armstrong and that side of the family wasn't astute enough to sue, at least to hold them accountable for their actions. :(
dmead 7y ago
fucking terrifying. I had open heart surgery 3 weeks ago with one of the surgeons named in the article (bavaria). My pacing wires were removed by the ICU resident (a physician), not a nurse. It's not a complicated thing, they just grab and pull. Maybe his wires were implanted incorrectly so they damaged something when getting removed? They also made it really clear that if you start bleeding during a cath procedure then they crack your chest open immediately. Not sure what they thought could happen in the cath lab if he was already bleeding internally. it's such a shame, they fucked up badly but i couldn't even imagine being part of the OR team that lost Neil Armstrong.

65 points by mhb 7y ago

Juan_Largearm 7y ago

Paywalled

mellosouls 7y ago
Yup, tho I can access it ok without an account. Limit I guess. Alternative here: https://time.com/5633280/neil-armstrong-estate-6-million-settlement/ https://time.com/5633280/neil-armstrong-estate-6-million-set...
- Juan_Largearm 7y ago
  Perfect, thank you very much
keenmaster 7y ago
If you’re using Safari, Reader View can bypass the NYT paywall.

mellosouls 7y ago

Sad footnote to one of the greatest of lives.

opwieurposiu 7y ago

Korolev is also rumored to have died due to hospital error: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev#Death

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/hdGqi http://archive.is/hdGqi

redlizard 7y ago

“If it was me, I would try medical therapy first, but it depends on how severe the pain is,” Dr. Mack said. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/neil-armstrong-heart-surgery.html?module=inline https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/neil-armstrong-hea... If someone was 82, and a quality-of-life surgery is elected to be performed, it is always the patient and the doctors making that decision. Surgeries can go wrong, they carry risk, heart surgery more so, heart surgery with an 82 year old even more so. Should we be holding the health care system accountable? Even when the risks are known? Do we all of a sudden have the expectation that every open heart surgery will be successful and no one will die? Hospitals shouldn't be rewarded for failures, but placing full blame on an organization with an impossible mandate seems a little bit unfair.

dandelany 7y ago
Based on the details in both articles, this seems like a mischaracterization. The issue is not the fact that he died after an inherently risky operation - it's that the doctors (allegedly) made mistakes afterward that unnecessarily increased the risk and potentially cost him his life. "Do patients always die if wire removal causes bleeding? No — it is very rare, surgeons said. Patients should be rushed to the operating room ... But Mr. Armstrong was taken to a cardiac catheterization lab first, before he went to surgery. The cath lab, Dr. Haft said, 'is not the solution.' ... By the time Mr. Armstrong got to the operating room, his heart had stopped and he had brain damage from a lack of blood to his brain. He died without regaining consciousness." "The expert reviews focus on the hospital’s decision to bring Mr. Armstrong to a catheterization lab rather than directly to an operating room when he began to experience complications. 'The decision to go to the cath lab was THE major error,' Dr. Joseph Bavaria, a vice-chair of cardiothoracic surgery at University of Pennsylvania wrote in a review conducted at the request of the Armstrong family."
Spooky23 7y ago
As someone who lost a loved one to cdiff and mrsa infections, I would hope to expect a basic level of competence in a hospital, which is increasingly not there.
- 7y ago

curiousgal 7y ago

> In a scorching July 2014 email to the hospital’s lawyers, Wendy R. Armstrong, a lawyer and the wife of Mr. Armstrong’s son Mark, noted that Mark and his brother, Rick, would soon be traveling to Florida to speak at a ceremony marking the 45th anniversary of the first moon landing. “This event at Kennedy Space Center will receive national news coverage,” Wendy Armstrong wrote. “Rick and Mark have been solicited by several book writers and filmmakers for ‘information about Neil that no one already knows.’” The lawyer suggested that unless the parties reached a quick settlement, the hospital would be publicly criticized for giving lethally flawed care to one of America’s most famous and revered public figures. Well that's nice, a touch of blackmail is always nice. Regardless of the care being flawed, he was 82 years old! It's hard not to paint the family as opportunistic and greedy.

dfeojm-zlib 7y ago

A similar situation happened to my grandfather: a hospital's medical error caused pneumonia and wrecked his lungs. He could've lived another 10-15 years because he was relatively healthy. He wasn't Neil Armstrong and that side of the family wasn't astute enough to sue, at least to hold them accountable for their actions. :(

dmead 7y ago

fucking terrifying. I had open heart surgery 3 weeks ago with one of the surgeons named in the article (bavaria). My pacing wires were removed by the ICU resident (a physician), not a nurse. It's not a complicated thing, they just grab and pull. Maybe his wires were implanted incorrectly so they damaged something when getting removed? They also made it really clear that if you start bleeding during a cath procedure then they crack your chest open immediately. Not sure what they thought could happen in the cath lab if he was already bleeding internally. it's such a shame, they fucked up badly but i couldn't even imagine being part of the OR team that lost Neil Armstrong.