The decision to cancel the surgery was made with patient safety in mind.
Chantelle Mooney, a 41-year-old cancer patient, faced the cancellation of her critical brain surgery due to a worldwide Microsoft outage on July 19. Scheduled for a craniotomy on Friday, the procedure was called off because of the global disruption affecting Microsoft systems, as reported by the New York Post.
Mrs Mooney was diagnosed with stage 4B terminal cervical cancer in February 2022, which had already spread to her lungs. Three weeks ago, a new mass was discovered in her brain after she experienced weakness on one side of her body. The 4-centimetre mass required urgent removal.
While waiting for her surgery at the hospital, Mrs Mooney saw news of the global Microsoft outage on television. Shortly after, her surgeon informed her that the surgery could not proceed without Microsoft systems, which are essential for scans, emergency medication, and accessing medical records.
Mrs Mooney described the situation, saying, "I've got a secondary brain tumour - my primary diagnosis is terminal cervical cancer. The brain tumour was only found three weeks ago, it's four centimetres across and has to be removed as an emergency."
The outage caused a morning of uncertainty as Mooney waited to see if the issue could be resolved. By 1:30 p.m., the hospital confirmed that the surgery would be postponed until the following Friday. "Ten minutes later, the surgeon came in and said they can't do the surgery without Microsoft systems," Mooney said. "A lot of the tools and scans use Microsoft, and they use it for emergency medication."
The decision to cancel the surgery was made with patient safety in mind. "It's a long surgery, ranging from four to seven hours, and by 1:30 p.m., they confirmed there was no way they were going to proceed. If the systems went down again, it would be too risky," Mooney explained.
The surgeon emphasized the dangers if the technology failed during the operation. "They wouldn't have been able to perform brain scans, administer blood transfusions - they couldn't even access my medical records. They really didn't want to cancel the surgery given its urgency, but ultimately, my safety comes first."
The global IT outage was attributed to a recent update from CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm. This disruption affected multiple sectors, including healthcare, causing significant delays and operational challenges worldwide.
Microsoft acknowledged the issue and worked to resolve it. "Earlier today, a CrowdStrike update was responsible for bringing down a number of IT systems globally," Microsoft said in a statement. By late Friday, Microsoft announced that mitigation actions were complete and services had recovered, although monitoring would continue to ensure stability.