Imagine going to the hospital for a routine surgery. You know that doctors perform this operation all the time, so you are confident that everything will go smoothly. Although the surgery goes well, you start feeling pain again a few months later. After being rushed to the hospital, you learn that your original surgery did not go as it should have. In fact, you need the same surgery again.
This scenario may sound a bit far-fetched, but it is exactly what happened to one man recently. Although he had an appendectomy last January, he underwent a second one last month. Of course, this doesn’t make sense. How can you have two appendectomies when you only have one appendix to remove?
It turns out that the surgeon who performed his first appendectomy never removed his appendix. Instead, the doctor removed a “yellowish mass,” which was not identified beyond that in a recent article. Last month, the man began experiencing severe pain from appendicitis. This time, doctors did remove his appendix.
Now, the man is suing the original surgeon and hospital for the botched surgery. As it turns out, at least one person at the hospital was aware that the mass removed from the patient’s body was not his appendix, but no one bothered to inform him. Perhaps worse than that, however, is the fact that the surgeon – who is board-certified and was once the director of surgery at a hospital – could not identify the patient’s appendix.
This many was lucky to have avoided the serious complications that can result from not removing an infected appendix. However, he is now likely facing expensive medical bills from two surgeries, one of which should not have been necessary. Fortunately, anyone who is injured because of a doctor’s mistake in Ohio or elsewhere can seek compensation through a medical malpractice lawsuit.
Source: AOL Jobs, “Man Sues Hospital, Doc: Appendix Left In After Appendectomy,” Erik Sherman, April 11, 2014