How a tattoo threatens a man’s life

Tattoos for most of the time are innocent and are pretty much harmless. So was it for this man, until he ended up being on the operation table.

It may seem like an innocent-looking tattoo.

But the ‘play button’ inking on a British man’s chest could have led to a catastrophic blunder that saw him operated on in the wrong place.

The patient, whose identity is unknown, had already been marked on the eve of his lung surgery with an arrow on his right shoulder.

But surgeons the next day were baffled when they saw his tattoo – and had to double check where he was supposed to be going under the knife.

The team at St George’s Hospital, London then used permanent marker on the man’s right shoulder to indicate the correct site before the operation.

The bizarre case intrigued the team of doctors so much they decided to publish it in the prestigious British Medical Journal Case Reports.

Writing in the journal, the team led by Joy Edlin explained how the patient’s play symbol tattoo had ‘the potential to cause confusion’.

Even though the man’s inking ‘gave rise to quite a stir in the anaesthetic room and operating theatre’, surgeons learned a valuable lesson.

They wrote: ‘It [the tattoo] reminded the entire team of the importance of correct site marking, the five perioperative communication.’