A 60-year-old woman from Milford, Connecticut, had surgery at Yale-New Haven Hospital in May of last year. She was to have a lesion removed off one of her ribs that could possibly be cancerous. The woman didn’t know that a surgery trainee would be part of the surgery team.

Radiologists did what they were supposed to do. They put metallic coils into the woman’s eighth rib and injected a dye that marked the woman’s skin where the surgery was to take place. However, when the surgery was done, the surgery trainee realized that he had removed part of the wrong rib. The woman was in immediate pain because the affected rib was not removed, even though radiology had marked it twice.

The surgeon in training told the woman that he didn’t remove enough of the rib and that she had to go right back into surgery. The woman’s lawyer said that the woman may not have filed a lawsuit if the surgery trainee hadn’t lied to her.

A spokesman for the hospital said the error was reported to the Department of Public Health and admitted that the error was made. An apology was made to the patient, according to the spokesman.

There was no mention of how much in damages the woman is seeking or if the only defendant is the surgery trainee.

When someone’s medical condition is made worse because of medical negligence, the victim has a right to hold the medical personnel or entity responsible for the error. An experienced lawyer can give you more information about how to go about filing a lawsuit that will do just that.

Source: ctpost.com, “Suit alleges surgeon removed wrong body part, lied about it,” Frank Juliano, March 18, 2016