Items found inside patients after surgery aren’t unheard of. But one Army veteran is suing Veterans Affairs on claims a doctor left a scalpel left inside him in 2013.
The man, 61-year-old Glenford Turner, went to get an MRI last March because of dizziness and long-term abdominal pain, according to his lawyers. Doctors reportedly tried to do an MRI but stopped on account of his severe abdominal pain.
An X-ray last year revealed that there was indeed a scalpel there, according to a statement from Turner’s lawyers, which doctors confirmed was the one used on Turner for a radical prostatectomy — total or partial prostate removal — Aug. 30, 2013 at the West Haven VA in Connecticut.
Turner had the scalpel removed April 26, 2017. It was located adjacent to his stomach and intestines, according to his complaint.
“Mr. Turner served our country proudly for decades,” Connecticut-based Joel Faxon, Turner’s lawyer, said in a press release. “It is shocking that in return for that service the VA thanked him by deploying a rookie surgical trainee to perform the surgery who showed an incomprehensible level of incompetence by losing the scalpel in Mr. Turner’s abdomen and not bothering to find it.”
He added: “I find it unconscionable that any hospital — particularly one serving our United States’ veterans — would be so haphazard in the care they provide.”
Member of the Senate Committee on Veteran Affairs Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement that “while the court determines liability, I have asked for a detailed explanation from VA of this deeply troubling report. I am demanding also full accountability so this kind of horrific negligence never happens again. America owes our veterans the world’s best medical care, nothing less.”
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Doctor Left Scalpel Inside Army Veteran’s Body, Now He Is Suing originally appeared on usnews.com
