When Trevor Roberts' leg bones snapped during a high school football game near Wichita, Kansas, he received the standard orthopedic treatment: a resetting of the bones with a titanium rod to hold them in place. So why did he have to have an above-the-knee amputation because of gangrene six days later?

The surgeon who had to remove most of the boy's leg, Dr. Archie Heddings at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, told USA Today he thought the health care system had failed Roberts in some way.