Seung Kang died in a Philadelphia hospital in 2005. He was only 59, and just a week before his death he'd been feeling quite healthy. But a heart catheterization showed blocked vessels to his heart, and a cardiothoracic surgeon recommended immediate bypass surgery — Kang's second open-heart surgery in two years.Further tests revealed a possible snag. The right ventricle of Kang's heart had attached to his breastbone, the sternum. "I think [the surgeon] quoted a risk of death around 5%," says Bon Ku, Kang's son-in-law. Sure enough, when the surgeons cut into the sternum they also cut into the ventricle that was attached to the bone. Kang died two days later.
"It's crazy. A 5% risk is high," Ku says now. But his wife and their family needed to make a decision about surgery quickly. "It wasn't that big of a deal when the surgeon was telling us, and I just don't think we asked those questions that we should have asked."
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