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SUV Crashes Into Operating Room During Surgery

POSTED: 1:33 pm CDT August 25, 2005
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NEWARK, N.J. -- Here's a complication the surgeon and patient didn't expect.

An SUV rammed into a New Jersey doctor's operating room toward the end of a cataract procedure. No one was injured. But Dr. Bernard Spier said if the accident had happened moments earlier, it could have hurt the patient's eye.

Spier had removed the cataract and had just used a plunger to implant a silicone lens when the crash threw him onto the partially sedated patient Tuesday.

Police said the driver was trying to back his SUV out of a parking space outside the Northern New Jersey Eye Institute, but the 77-year-old failed to put the car into reverse.
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The front end smashed through a wall and stopped just inches from doctor and patient when its back tires snagged a curb.

Spier and his staff took the patient from the room, and the driver was pulled from his Toyota by a passer-by.



Edited by - mattlott on Aug 25 2005 4:37 PM