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Quebec’s College of Physicians confirmed on Thursday that the surgeon who declined to operate on an emergency-room patient at St. Mary’s Hospital who later died did, in fact, have his privileges revoked by the hospital to perform such operations.

However, a well-known Montreal medical malpractice lawyer argued that doesn’t mean that Dr. Carl Emond is off the hook. Jean-Pierre Ménard said there is plenty of blame to go around — from the provincial government that has been “diminishing” health services without informing the population, to the West Island health authority that decided to discontinue vascular surgery at St. Mary’s and revoke Emond’s privileges.

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But Ménard contended that Emond also had a legal and professional obligation to operate on the patient, 73-year-old Mark Blandford, given that his life was in danger in the ER on the night of Nov. 2.

And as questions continued to swirl around the circumstances surrounding Blandford’s death, a thoracic surgeon who trained under Emond — and who now practises in the United States — suggested the ER staff might have misdiagnosed Blandford’s condition when he arrived, losing precious time to try to save his life before an aortic aneurysm in his abdomen burst and he started to “exsanguinate,” the blood draining into his belly.

