Patients in Colorado may be worried about their own future operations after learning about a case when a woman lost her healthy kidney because a surgeon mistook it for a cancerous tumor. During what was scheduled to be a routine back surgery in April 2016, the 51-year-old woman checked into a local hospital. She was seeking a fusion of bones in her lower back after she had been injured in a car accident. However, when she went into surgery, the physician performing the operation identified her kidney and proclaimed it to be a tumor, declaring the situation an emergency and removing it immediately.
