The health department in Alicante-Sant Joan is looking into what happened with a lady who had surgery at Sant Joan Hospital on February 18th for precancerous lesions in her uterus. The gynaecologists who did the treatment are said to have “forgotten” to leave a glove with gauze in her vagina. She later vomited it at home after being released, even though she was in a lot of agony. On Friday, March 20th, the Valencian Ministry of Health acknowledged this probe.
Several people at the hospital said that a month ago the woman had a laparoscopic hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, which removed her uterus and fallopian tubes. This came after a diagnostic in June of last year of a lesion that might be uterine cancer. The patient told the TVE show “Directo al grano” that she had a lot of discomfort in her ovaries following the surgery, but she was sent home without any proof that the treatment had worked.
The intubation also hurt the patient’s teeth.
Removal
She says that hours later, she stayed on the toilet until she pushed out the glove, which had been crumpled into a ball with a handful of gauze inside. She felt pain as great as if she were giving birth, with contractions.
This newspaper has heard from reliable sources at the hospital that the medical equipment was “in the vagina,”with gauze in it. They used it as packing material and forgot to take it out.” They also said that during the procedure, she hurt her mouth on an incisor tooth, which has become loose and displaced, perhaps because of the intubation moves. She will need an implant for this reason.
Complaint
The woman has made a complaint to the Patient Information and Support Service (SAIP) at Sant Joan Hospital. She is also thinking about pressing criminal charges against the gynaecologist who treated her for carelessness with the help of a lawyer. She is still getting medical and psychological care because of what happened.
Hospital staff members said they were sorry about what happened. They said they are really stressed and have a lot of work to do because this facility serves 250,000 people in Alicante and neighbouring towns in the Alicante region, but there aren’t enough staff members.
They said, “Accidents like this can happen when doctors are under that much stress and working at 200%.”
Mistreatment
This Friday, some of the staff protested outside the hospital with the slogan “Abuse is the norm and abuse is the rule.” They were unhappy not only with the state of the medical profession as a whole, but also with the specific situation they are in at this hospital, where “management turns a deaf ear to our demands.” This was the fifth day of a strike that has been going on all week. They said they didn’t want to cause problems in Valencia, which is the Valencian Ministry of Health.
The Patient Advocate hasn’t seen the case yet, but Carmen Flores, the organisation’s president, called the mistake “monumental.” She did say that similar things happen from time to time, though. “We’ve already seen some cases where medical equipment was left inside patients during surgery,”
