Understanding Iatrogenic Illnesses: Hidden Dangers in Healthcare – NaPodPoMo

In today’s episode of Self Powered Healing, I’m going to introduce a word that you may not be familiar with, though you will likely recognize the concept.

I first learned that word, iatrogenic, when I took a medical sociology course in college. It’s a very strange word, I’ll spell it for you: I A T R O G E N I C

It comes from the Greek in a combination of two words, iatro, which means physician or healer, and genic, which means produced by. And it first came into use in the year 1920. According to Wikipedia, iatrogenic illnesses are induced unintentionally in a patient by a physician through either a treatment, therapy, words, or actions resulting in an infection or other complication.

Here’s a couple of examples:

Any procedure from blood draws to injections to surgery that might result in an infection due to contamination during the procedure, or the harmful effects caused by prescription medications, they are usually called side effects, but some of those issues seem like more than a side effect. Like when you hear the possible side effects from a prescription drug, and they include things like cardiac arrest and death.

Another example is an incorrect diagnosis that results in improper treatment for the patient.
Here are some examples of unintended consequences of surgical removal of organs:
Tonsils are an important part of the immune system. Without them, you’re likely to be sick more often.

The gallbladder is important and necessary for proper fat digestion. Though, when you talk to doctors, they will tell you, we’ll take it out, you can live without it. But fats in a diet are essential. They provide energy and heat, raise your metabolism, slow down food absorption, and are carriers of the fat soluble vitamins: vitamins A, D, E, and K. Fats are also the building blocks for all of your hormones, and those control many bodily processes such as metabolism, growth and development, sexual function, reproduction, sleep-wake cycle, and mood, and especially homeostasis: meaning regulating blood pressure, blood sugar, fluids, electrolyte balance, and body temperature.

And even the appendix has been found to have a function.

I’m pretty sure that most all of us either know someone impacted by iatrogenesis or have been impacted ourselves.

I have more than once. In one case for me, one surgery snowballed into a number of other injuries as well as illness. It started with a Morton’s Neuroma on my left foot. I thought I had checked out the doctor thoroughly, but wound up with severe pain following surgery. Though I could never prove it, I suspect that the actual surgery was performed by a doctor in training under my doctor’s supervision.

Because of the pain and its location near the ball of the foot, I was given a post surgical shoe designed to keep pressure off the front of the foot. The height of the shoe was at least an inch higher than my normal shoes, which resulted in a series of injuries, primarily on the right side.

They included injuries to my right foot, heel, knee, and eventually to my back, plus a bout of plantar fasciitis. And because of all the NSAIDs I took, I had some gallbladder issues that resulted in having it removed.

The irony of the situation was that I had debated having that first surgery, but decided that I would go ahead and do it so that I could get back to Jazzercise. But it never happened because of all the injuries. I never did get back to Jazzercise.

I could count myself lucky though.

I have a friend that wound up with internal bleeding and emergency surgery caused by a drug prescribed for arthritis.

My father had a very serious infection following neck surgery. He had to wear a contraption we called a halo and have daily IV antibiotics for six weeks as a result of the infection. A few years later, he developed a serious infection from surgery done to repair his broken hip. I’m pretty sure that the hip infection contributed to his passing.

And just this morning, a friend was telling me about someone she knew that wound up in kidney failure. And when he consulted a nephrologist who reviewed his history, he determined that all of the drugs that he had been prescribed in the past had burned out his kidneys. Thus, he needed a kidney transplant. He passed a few months after that transplant.

Perhaps you or someone you know also has a story to tell.

How serious a problem is this, though? When you consider everything, I think it can be very serious. I’ve seen from more than one source that the third highest cause of death in the United States is what is termed iatrogenic.

I would say that indicates a serious problem.

Thanks for listening today. If you have any comments on this episode or on the whole NaPodPoMo concept in general, you can visit this page to leave comments either on this page or at SelfPoweredHealing.com/November2024. You can also find a listing and link for all November’s episodes on that same page: SelfPoweredHealing.com/November2024.  

By the way, Self Powered Healing is still looking for interviews with people who want to share a story of healing. Do you have a healing story? I would love to hear about it and see if maybe you could share it on our show. So if you’re interested in sharing, then visit selfpoweredhealing.com/share to schedule a chat.  

You aren’t committing at this point. You’re just having a chat with me to see what’s going on. It will be confidential unless or until you decide you want to share. And if you get there and there’s not a convenient time for you, send me a message because we’ll always find a time.  

And remember this always,  