An army veteran filed a lawsuit against a Veteran Affairs hospital in West Haven, Connecticut, after he discovered that a scalpel was left inside his abdomen after a procedure.
The scalpel had been inside the veteran's body for more than four years and was only revealed after he took an MRI at the same hospital.
Surgeons Leave Scalpel Inside Patient's Body After Surgery
Glenford Turner, a 61-year-old army veteran from Bridgeport, had surgery in 2013 at the West Haven Veteran Affairs Hospital to remove his prostate gland.
After the operation, Turner started to experience pain in his abdomen. In 2017, still suffering from the abdominal pains accompanied with dizziness, the army veteran went to the same hospital to have himself checked.
An X-ray revealed a 5-inch scalpel handle inside his body. Court documents were unclear if the handle had a blade attached, but the object was removed in a following operation.
The incident did not end there, as Turner decided to file a lawsuit against the hospital, claiming that a trainee surgeon of the hospital left the object inside him and closed the wound.
According to Joel Faxon, Turner's lawyer, the doctors confirmed that the scalpel was the same one that was used on the army veteran during his operation back in 2013. Faxon expects Turner to be awarded damages worth more than $1 million.
"It's perplexing to me how they could be so incompetent that a scalpel that really should only be on the exterior of your body not only goes into the body but then is sewn into the body," Faxon said.
"It's a level of incompetence that's almost incomprehensible."
Veterans Affairs Apologizes For Surgery Horror Story
The Veteran Affairs Department formally apologized to Turner for the incident. VA Secretary David Shulkin said that the department is investigating the incident and working to prevent similar things from happening in the future.
Shulkin, however, added that surgical materials being left inside patients happens in the United States 1,500 times a year, but the rate is much lower in VA hospitals. He admitted that this was not an excuse, though, and such incidents should never happen.
At the very least, Turner is recovering from the scalpel left inside his abdomen and received an apology from the hospital. Some surgery horror stories do not have relatively good endings, including the drunk plastic surgeon who showed up to an operation, the British surgeon who was fined for marking patients' livers, and the hospital that was sued after a surgeon took nude pictures of her.
