A 90-YEAR-OLD woman who went to the hospital to get her leg amputated had the wrong limb removed by Austrian doctors.

The newspaper Kleine Zeitung reported that the patient, who was rushed to St. Johann hospital in Tyrol last month suffering vascular disease, had both legs removed after doctors realised they had initially removed the wrong one.

Hospital bosses tried to cover up the incident and when it became public they hid behind their Hippocratic Oath, claiming medical confidentiality.

Prosecutors were expected to begin investigating and the doctors involved could face charges of negligence and causing bodily harm.

In a statement, the hospital said human error as well as a breakdown in safety measures were to blame for the mistake, adding that it would "do everything to guarantee this incident is clarified without fault".

Unbelievable!

Happens more often than you think... usually the doctor who sends the patient in will write on the leg to be removed so the surgeons won't remove the wrong one.

Mostly it's because sleep deprivation lowers mental abilities... 17 hours of straight wakefulness is the equivalent of 0.05% blood alcohol... the same as a couple of beers.

And surgeons often go 24 or 48 hours awake.