Allegedly, a woman out in California went under the knife in order to have a diseased kidney taken out, but came out of the surgical theater missing her spleen in what is a mistake that needed a group of five specialists to figure out is suing, according to a report.
Aged 55, Sarajane Parfitt is now looking down the barrel of yet another major surgery in order to take care of the need implied by the original surgery about the kidney. She has been forced to go through severe emotional distress and for the rest of her life will be extremely vulnerable to future infections as a result of the horribly failed surgery, reads the suit.
“During this difficult time for patient Sarajane Parfitt and her family members, we offer our sympathy,” stated the Community Regional Medical Center in a release given to the Fresno Bee. “Because this case is pending, we are unable to comment.”
A medical mistake left a Fresno County woman missing the wrong organ after a surgeon operated to remove a diseased kidney, according to a new lawsuit. https://t.co/DDnK70FUVW
— ABC30 Fresno (@ABC30) July 7, 2022
At first, the mistake went entirely undetected in the wake of the June 2021 surgery. However, when the organ was looked over by a pathologist, he “was so astonished, he asked other pathologists to confirm his diagnoses,” reads the summary of the suit. In the end, it took five pathologists to finally agree that the organ they had been given to look over was in fact a previously healthy spleen and not a diseased kidney.
“They called the hospital,” stated Pual Pimentel, the attorney for Parfitt. “The hospital immediately runs a CT scan and sure enough, her kidney which should’ve been removed, was still there. They’d taken out the wrong organ, her spleen.”
Pimentel labeled the whole surgical fiasco “insane.”
The suit from Parfitt primarily named Dr. Narayana Ambati, Community Regional Medical Center and Urology Associates of Central California. However, it also mentioned another doctor identified as Shahin Chandrasoma of Pasadena.
The legal representative for Ambati, Mike Ball, stated to the Fresno Bee that the incident had been fully investigated by the California Department of Public Health and that the official surgeon for the fiasco was Chandrasoma, who was a visiting surgeon at the time.
Pimentel did agree that it is possible that Ambati did not carry out the actual surgery, but stated he had not “had that confirmed.”
When the spleen is taken out, various other organs start to take over its previous functions, but it leads to a much higher risk of serious infections going forward, as reported by the Mayo Clinic.
“She’s at risk for infections and she has to be very sensitive to that issue,” explained Pimentel. “She’s had to have a lot of injections to prevent infections in the future. And she still needs her kidney out.”