Surgical scissors left in patient’s stomach

Hyderabad: In a case of sheer medical negligence, doctors at the prestigious NIMS left surgical scissors in the stomach of a women patient who underwent surgery for Hernia on November 2. She was readmitted to the same hospital with severe stomach pain and an X-ray taken on Saturday morning exposed the blunder committed by the doctors. While the victim's family lodged a police complaint immediately, NIMS doctors conducted one more surgery on her to remove the artery forceps (surgical scissors) that are used by surgeons during operations.

Maheshwari Choudhary, 33, a homemaker from Mangalhaat, and a mother of two young children, a girl aged 7 years and a boy of three years, went through a torrid time in the last 100 days.On October 30, she was admitted to NIMS at Panjagutta with Diaphragmatic Hernia with Volvulus, and after tests, a medical team comprising Dr Venumadhav and Dr Jaganmohan Reddy and Gastrointestinal surgery team performed the operation on November 2. After post-operative treatment, Maheshwari was discharged on November 12.

She came for removal of stitches 10 days later and complained about stomach pain, but doctors gave her some painkillers and advised her to take rest without straining herself at home, according to Sadhana Choudhary, her mother-in-law." Many a time she used to complain about the stomach pain. But we used to advise her not to get too worried and pain would subside slowly. However, on Friday night she became restless and started saying that she might die of pain. We shifted her to NIMS in the night and results of X-ray on Saturday around left all of us shocked," she said.

Maheshwari's husband Harshavardhan lodged a medical negligence complaint in Panjagutta PS demanding action against the doctors and staff who conducted the operation. He alleged that NIMS administration was not giving the X-ray report to them and trying to hush up the case. Relatives and friends of the victim's family also staged a protest condemning the laxity on the part of the doctors.

As the issue got blown up in media, NIMS took corrective measures and another operation was carried out on her and her condition was found to be stable.Meanwhile, NIMS Director Dr K Manohar constituted an internal committee comprising Dean,Medical Superintendent and Surgical Gastroenterologist to inquire into the issue and give a report based on which action would be taken against those responsible for the mistake. He stated that they would look if it is a case of medical negligence as was alleged by the affected patient's family.