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Kris Sperry, MD; John Eugene Smialek, MD

JAMA. 1986;255(18):2472-2474.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

ADVANCES in the technology of life support and maintenance during the past several decades have been responsible for the saving of countless lives. A critically ill patient may be surrounded by an overwhelming mass of tubes, wires, and stateof-the-art appurtenances. When a patient's condition deteriorates, life-assist devices and monitors proliferate as all available devices of advanced medical technology are brought to bear in an effort to maintain a life.

With the burgeoning of complex equipment there has been an accompanying rise in the number of deaths due to machine malfunction and as complications of long-term indwelling intravascular devices. The potential fatal complications of hemodialysis¹ and Swan-Ganz catheters² are particularly well known.

Investigation of deaths in such patients requires close scrutiny of all human and mechanical involvement, and an organized, sequential approach to investigation and postmortem examination is optimal.³ The investigation of iatrogenic deaths related to medical equipment . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque.

Footnotes
Reprint requests to the Office of the Medical Investigator, University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, NM 87131 (Dr Sperry).

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