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Written By: Editorial Team | Updated : September 28, 2012 10:54 AM IST
Docs at a private nurshing home in Delhi left a surgical gauze inside a 28 year old woman's abdomen. They did so while performing a Caesarean on her on September 13.On September 25 the woman was rushed to St Stephen's Hospital after complaining of severe abdomen pain where the docs found that her abdomen had swollen dangerously due to infection from the gauze.
Since then the object has been removed and she is recuperating at St Stephen's. Earlier she had been admitted at Rishabh Nursing Home in Kailash Nagar. PR Officer at St Stephen's Balbir Singh said: "A foreign body like the gauze lying inside the abdomen can pose a serious threat of infection. With the gauze, we retrieved about two litres of pus, due to which her belly had swollen alarmingly. She was in a critical condition."
According to him, she's now stable. Her family members allege that docs at Rishabh Nursing home had refused to examine her after the delivery. Her husband Amit Khandelwal said: "My wife was vomiting and had a constant stomach pain and almost no appetite. We also noticed that her belly was swelling. But doctors kept saying that these were digestion problems, and she was fine."
He said Shweta had returned to the nursing home on September 22, when her stitches were removed after another examination. "Doctors did not do any ultrasound or X-ray, though she was in so much pain and the stomach had swollen," Amit said. The family has filed a police complaint. Authorities from the nursing home denied any knowledge about the infected surgical gauze. Medical Superintendent Dr Anil Kumar Jain said Shweta was monitored round-the-clock after her surgery and was discharged only after she was stable.
Jain said: "We discharged her after all investigations, and both the mother and the baby were doing fine." He said on September 24 night, Amit had contacted him saying Shweta's condition was deteriorating. "I told them to bring her (to the nursing home) at night or the next morning. The patient was never brought to us. Now we hear they shifted her to another hospital the next day," Dr Jain said.
When asked about the gauze, Dr Jain said: "How can we comment on this? We never retrieved it, so we don't know what was found." Meanwhile her family intends to approach the Delhi Medical Council.
