A 57-year-old man in Venezuela has died after surgeons accidentally left a pair of scissors in his stomach during a botched surgery.
The patient has been identified as Ivan Chavez, who was undergoing the operation for inflamed diverticula.
The doctors at the hospital said the surgery was a success and that Chavez would be discharged from the hospital soon. However, a few days later, Chavez began to experience abdominal pain and difficulty eating and using the bathroom, Yahoo News reported. Four days after the operation, medical staff at the hospital were told to perform an X-ray.
The reports showed the surgeons had botched the operation, and a pair of scissors was left in his stomach.
The patient underwent emergency surgery to extract the scissors, which, again, was deemed successful, local media Elcomercio reported [Google Translate showed].
Even though the object was removed, the patient died five days later.
The family of the victim blamed the surgeons for the death, and called them negligent. They said the medical staff initially hid from the next-of-kin the man's true condition and were trying to pretend everything had gone as planned. The family also said they were notified about Chavez's deathe nearly two hours after he died.
The exact date of the surgery and the man's death remain unclear. It is also not known if a legal case would be filed by the family.
In a similar incident last year, an 18-year-old girl was battling for life after doctors accidentally left a pair of scissors inside her abdomen during a surgery. The teenager had been identified as Monira Khatun, hailing from the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, underwent surgery. Though the foreign object had been removed from her stomach, her condition remained critical. The teenager never fully recovered from her illness and began to experience frequent bouts of stomach pain after the surgery. Khatun's family took her to several doctors, who prescribed pain killers. Later, an X-ray was conducted which found a foreign object inside the girl's stomach. The family of Khatun decided to seek legal action and pressed charges against the doctors and hospital.
Representation. Surgery tools. Photo: domkarch/Pixabay
