After enduring agonizing pain for 18 months following a caesarean operation, a woman was astonished to discover that surgeons had overlooked an inside foreign object.
According to BBC News, the surgery’s Alexis retractor, also known as AWR, is the size of a dinner plate and had been residing inside her abdomen.
An AWR, which can retract incisions up to 17 cm in diameter and was undetectable on X-rays, is a tool used to hold back the edges of a wound during surgery.
The woman endured significant stomach pain as a result of this mistake for 1.5 years until an abdominal CT scan revealed it.
The mistake was discovered when the 20-year-old woman went to the doctor when the discomfort became intolerable.
The tool was left inside the New Zealand mother after she gave birth at Auckland City Hospital, according to investigations into the case, which revealed a grim reality.
In 2021, it was finally removed from her belly, putting an end to her frequent medical appointments because of agony, The Guardian continues.
The error was made in the presence of a surgeon, a senior registrar, an instrument nurse, three circulating nurses, two anesthetists, two anesthetic technicians, and a theatre midwife.
In the wake of the discovery, the Health and Disability Commissioner Morag McDowell accused the facility of breaching the code of patient rights.
“There is substantial precedent to infer that when a foreign object is left inside a patient during an operation, the care fell below the appropriate standard,” he said, calling it a ‘never’ event.”
The hospital apologised to the affected woman, adding that the case has resulted in improvements to their systems and processes which will reduce the chance of such reoccurring.