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German teen unplugs pensioner's 'noisy' life support machine

Can I have the machine that goes ZZZZ

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Police in Southern Germany are quizzing a 17-year-old car crash victim who turned off a fellow hospital patient's life-support machine because it was keeping him awake.

Frederik Moelner wound up in intensive care recovering from the accident, reports Ananova, but his attempts to have a bit of recuperative kip were stymied by the noisy life support machine keeping the 76-year-old in the neighbouring bed breathing.

Rather than take a sedative, the 17-year-old took matters into his own hands, pulling the plug on the offending piece of medical technology, thus ensuring shut-eye himself and, potentially, the big sleep for his unfortunate neighbour.

Luckily medical staff quickly realised what had happened, and reconnected the lucky pensioner. They then connected the sleep deprived 17-year-old with the local police.

Sadly, it is not clear whether the machine in question was one that went bing. ®

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Latest Comments

re: the machine that goes bing was a complete waste of time

not nearly as much of a waste as the machine that goes Bling! :)

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Anonymous Coward

Power was cut?

>> Given that medical staff 'quickly realised' it might be assumed that the machine did give a frenzied beeping when the main power was cut.

It says in the article that the machine was turned off, not that the power was cut. If the machine loses external power, then you would expect an alarm - however if the machine is simply turned off then the would be no reason for an alarm.

Question really should be what protects are there against the machine being unplugged or turned off by unauthorised persons?

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Re: Re: 5 minutes to shutdown...

Tim, while that is correct, the machinery in question was disconnected from the mains grid, thus also taking it out of the loop of any back-up power systems.

On the other hand, I know from experience that a heart monitor can go for several hours on its battery, as a patient with a heart monitor could disconnect said monitor from the mains and go into the cafeteria with it to have lunch. (Do note, said patient was not in ICU).

Similarly, IV pumps can go for hours on end with just their batteries. Breathing machines and heart-lung pumps, on the other hand, use quite some power and in addition are not designed to operate disconnected, they would likely only last for a short while to allow back-up power to kick in.

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