Any surgery is considerably risky, so you’d expect any medical staff involved to be extra attentive to every detail. However, a South Dakota doctor performing abdominal surgery was a little careless and left a needle behind inside the patient’s belly area. Two months later, the patient was having notable discomfort in their abdomen and spoke with the same surgeon, who claimed that it was just “the pain would subside with time since she wasn’t fully healed.” Less than a week later, she was in severe abdominal pain, which led her to take a CT scan at an ER. To her shock, they discovered a needle was left inside of her abdomen.
Of course, the ER quickly contacted the surgeon who did the surgery, and their dismissive reply was, “All instruments were accounted for. If she’s still having discomfort in 4-6 weeks, she can follow up with another CT scan.” To have such a dangerous object lodged inside of your body can’t be good for mental stress levels, not to mention the risk and the serious physical pain the patient here was already experiencing. However, to make sure, she had a pelvic ultrasound done, and bizarrely enough, the medical technicians claimed there was no needle.
They tried to discharge her, but she disagreed, expressing how scary it is to not know if a sharp needle is stuck inside your abdomen. Yet, the hospital staff dismissed her and told her to make a follow-up appointment with her physician the following week. Doubting what the staff told her, she instead went to a hospital in a different state, “where a simple x-ray showed the needle clearly in her abdomen.” Surgery to remove the needle was immediately scheduled, and the needle was removed — a very different response from the initial hospital staff who did her CT scan.
It turns out that the surgeon’s hospital and the hospital where she went to the ER are directly affiliated with each other, not to mention that the staff trusted the lying doctor more than her own words about the needle. The patient posted on Reddit about the whole fiasco, and everyone strongly believes this was negligence and a deceitful surgeon trying to hide their mistake. A medicolegal consultant in the comment section said that “this definitely seems to be a case [of] potential gross negligence led to subsequent unnecessary surgery.” Others chime in, telling the patient to “find a good malpractice lawyer, Pronto.”
Fortunately, the patient says she’s recovering well. Hopefully, she’ll now be able to be compensated for all the extra trouble she went through to get the needle removed, as well as justice for the pain and risk she experienced in the first place post-surgery.
