Doctors brawl over need for cesarean

Some news is so strange that I could never even try to make it up. First there was delivery room football, in which a new father intercepts his daughter to keep with her mother. Then there was the delivery room wrestling match, in which an OB physically wrestled an ambulating woman back onto the bed.

But this recent story is even weirder and wilder. Last week, two Sicilian doctors engaged in a delivery-room brawl over a patient's need for a cesarean section.

According to Italian media accounts, Salpietro's gynaecologist, Antonio De Vivo, punched his hand through a window after his collar was grabbed by the second doctor. Asked for a comment De Vivo later said: "I merely say that in this matter I am the wronged party and I was attacked."

Molonia [the father], 37, a private detective, was quoted as saying he saw De Vivo leave the labour room with blood dripping from his hand. "There is a gap that goes from 7.40 [in the morning], when the row blew up, to nine o'clock, when they operated on my wife. Why did all that time go by?"

What's next--team sports, delivery room style? Imagine...nurses and physicians squaring off for rounds of Ultimate Bedpan or placenta rugby.