The surgeon-in-training told the patient she had to return to surgery because not enough of her rib had been removed, when actually the wrong rib had been taken.
A Connecticut woman has filed a lawsuit against Yale New Haven Hospital after having the wrong body part removed during a May 18, 2015, surgery performed by a surgeon-in-training who lied later to cover up the mistake he had made. Deborah Craven, 60, was scheduled to have part of her eighth rib removed due to a lesion. Instead, Dr. Ricardo Quarrie, a resident surgeon at the hospital, removed the seventh rib. Quarrie then tried to cover his mistake by telling Craven she had to go back to surgery because not enough of the eighth rib had been removed. A metal coil used during surgery was also left inside Craven, according to the lawsuit.
Radiologists marked the site of the lesion on Craven’s eighth rib prior to the surgery by placing metallic coils into the rib and injecting dye into the skin and surrounding tissue. When Craven awoke after the surgery she had immediate pain that lasted into the evening. An x-ray showed that the metal markers were still in place and that part of the seventh rib had been removed.
Joel Faxon, who is Craven’s attorney, said there would have been no lawsuit had Quarrie not lied about the mistake. A spokesman for the hospital said the facility recognized that a mistake had been made and they advised the patient, apologized, and immediately reported the error to the Connecticut Department of Public Health.
When she learned of the mistake, Craven asked that Quarrie not be involved in the corrective surgery, but he was still allowed to assist with the second operation.
The case was filed with the Superior Court of New Haven on March 14.
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