Doctors Disciplined for Baby-Free C-Section!!!  
Katie Drummond Contributor
AOL News
(April 2) -- Two North Carolina doctors have been disciplined, but not suspended from practicing medicine, following an investigation into a 2008 cesarean section that they performed on a woman who wasn't even pregnant.
The woman and her husband walked into the Cape Fear Medical Center in Fayetteville, N.C., and asked for a C-section. The doctors involved, Gerianne Geszler and Dorrette Grant, spent two days trying to induce labor before opting for surgery.
But when they opened the woman's abdomen, the doctors realized she wasn't pregnant after all.
Neither doctor examined the woman to confirm a pregnancy during her hospital stay. Instead, they relied on the diagnosis of an attending resident.
As it turned out, the woman, who hasn't been identified, was suffering from what's known as a "hysterical pregnancy," or pseudocyesis. The condition is psychiatric, but accompanied by very physical symptoms like loss of menses, weight gain and even pains that mimic labor.
The ailment can be remarkably convincing, and experts speculate that the brain triggers hormonal fluxes to align precisely with an actual pregnancy.
But a doctor should still know better, concluded the North Carolina Medical Board, which was responsible for reviewing the case.
"Your inappropriate reliance on their diagnosis and the failure to conduct your own examination were contributing factors in the unnecessary attempt at a cesarean delivery," their statement to the doctors read.
Other obstetricians agree.
"You open someone's abdomen, you make darn sure you know what you're doing," Dr. Paul Paulman, assistant dean for clinical skills and quality at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, told ABC News. "It's a potentially life-changing event."
Both doctors received "letters of reprimand," which are considered lax on the scale of possible punishment. The letters don't prohibit or suspend practice, but they are permanent parts of a doctor's public record.
The medical board also noted that the resident who'd made the pregnancy diagnosis lacked sufficient experience to do so. Dr. Geszler, who still practices medicine -- albeit no longer in obstetrics -- disagrees.
"It wasn't something I thought I'd have to check behind somebody on," Geszler told the Fayetteville Observer. "The bottom line is the woman convinced everybody she was pregnant."
Dr. Grant is still delivering babies at the same hospital where the incident occurred.
The case in North Carolina appears to be unique, but it's not the first time doctors have mistaken a hysterical pregnancy for the real thing. In 1990, Paulman treated a woman who claimed to be 13 weeks pregnant and exhibited typical symptoms. Upon examination, he concluded she couldn't be pregnant -- because she didn't have a uterus.
In that case, it was an easy diagnosis. But even with a uterus, Paulman says diagnosing a pregnancy takes little more than a few well-placed presses on the abdomen.
"You can feel the unmistakable bony head," he said.
Have any of you heard about this type of thing or this condition?....
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