Hospital sued for leaving 16 objects in patient after surgery

Doctors are not perfect and they are susceptible to making errors when treating patients in Chicago. Many errors are minor and cause patients no harm. But when doctors clearly deviate from the standard of care, their mistakes can be devastating, especially when mistakes occur while doctors are treating patients who are already suffering from serious or life-threatening health problems.

Some medical professionals’ mistakes are so outrageous that patients and other doctors can’t even comprehend how the mistakes could have ever happened. For example, a family recently filed a lawsuit against a hospital where their loved one was treated several years ago. The lawsuit states that the 74-year-old patient had a prostate cancer procedure performed at the hospital in 2009. After the procedure, doctors assured the patient and his family that the procedure was a success. But after the procedure, the man suffered from severe pain that wouldn’t go away. Several months later, it was discovered that surgeons had left 16 foreign items in his body.

Items should never be left in patients’ bodies after surgical procedures because foreign objects can cause patients to develop infections or experience other complications like severe pain. But to leave 16 items in a body is absolutely appalling. Although the incident happened in Germany, it is still very troubling to know that something like this could ever happen to a patient.

When medical professionals finally discovered that the patient still had surgical items in his body, doctors had to perform two separate surgeries to safely remove the items. When removing the items, doctors discovered a needle, gauze, bandages and even parts of a surgical mask that had been left in the man’s body.

The patient died last year from cancer, but his family is still pursuing a medical negligence lawsuit against the hospital that had performed the operation. The family believes that their loved one may have lived longer had he not been forced to endure additional health problems from the surgical error.

Source: Yahoo! News, “Scalpel?…Scalpel? Surgeons leave 16 items in patient’s body,” Jordana Divon, Jan. 17, 2013

  • Our firm provides legal counsel to patients and families who have been harmed by doctors’ mistakes and surgical errors. To learn more about protecting medical malpractice victims’ rights and seeking compensation for malpractice-related injuries and costs, please visit our Chicago surgical errors attorneys page.

Surgical Errors

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