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She was told it was a routine hernia repair. You’ll be in and out in the same day. Would
you like to learn why this routine hernia repair turned out to be a case involving a
failure to diagnose massive septic infection and resulting in her death? Come join me as
I share with you this interesting case. Hi. I’m Gerry Oginski. I’m a New York medical
malpractice and personal injury trial attorney practicing law here in the state of New York.
She was going in for a hernia repair. The patient went in for the surgery and during
the course of surgery there was inevitably a complication. What was it? The doctors made
a hole in the bowel. Now they didn’t do this on purpose, it was an accidental hole.
Luckily for the patient, they actually recognized the hole at the time they made it. Once the
hole is made, the doctors now have a couple of choices. If the injury to the bowel is
minor they can sew it up closed and that’s the end of it. However if it’s a more significant
injury, like a through and through perforation, what you have to do then is you have to remove
the damaged portion of the bowel. It was our claim that this doctor made 3 mistakes. The
first mistake was that this doctor never should have been performing an elective hernia repair
on a patient who had no cancer at all. Instead he should have referred the patient to a general
surgeon to have this hernia repair done because a general surgeon does this all the time.
Mistake number two came about during the course of surgery. Now the doctors and the experts
tell us that the fact that they made a hole in the bowel during the hernia repair is not
evidence of malpractice. But the failure to properly close it up afterwards – that’s
a departure from good care which is medical malpractice. So what happened here? The doctors,
instead of calling in a general surgeon or calling in a colorectal specialist to come
in and fix the bowel, they decided to fix this on their own. Whether they wanted to
be cowboys or not we don’t know. But the fact is they made a conscious decision to
actually try and repair this on their own. So what happens is you cut out the offending
– the damaged portion – of the bowel and now you’re left with two ends of the bowel.
You then have to connect them together and then suture it up closed and make a watertight
seal. And that’s what they did and sent the patient back to recovery. Well over the
next two days, this patient’s condition continued to deteriorate. The doctors who
were caring for her couldn’t figure out why. Finally, an attending surgeon comes in
to evaluate her and says you know what; I have to take you back to the operating room
immediately to find out what’s going on here. What he found was remarkable. He found
fecal contents in her abdominal cavity. Do you know what that is? That’s poop! That’s
the stuff that travels through our intestines and ultimately comes out our behind. But that’s
what was leaking into her belly causing her to get sicker and sicker, causing a massive
infection known as sepsis. Then what he found was absolutely astonishing. Remember when
I told you they took the two ends together and put it together and sealed it up tight?
Well now the two ends were wide open. So all the contents that were in her bowel were now
leaking out freely into her belly. Not a single person – not a single doctor, nobody at
the hospital – even considered the possibility that this patient had a leak in her bowel
and that massive infection was what was causing her condition to deteriorate. Unfortunately
for this patient, all of her organs began shutting down because of this massive septic
infection and she ultimately died as a result of that. So why do I share this interesting
case with you? I share it with you to give you an insight and an understanding into what
goes on in this type of case involving a failure to diagnose sepsis in a routine hernia repair
that should have been done by a general surgeon but instead was done by a gyn cancer specialist.
You know, chances are you’re watching this you have questions or concerns about your
own matter whether it involves an improperly done surgery, sepsis, or something else along
those lines and you have legal questions. Well if you do, what I encourage you to do
is pick up the phone and call me. I can answer your legal questions. I handle these types
of cases every single day and I welcome your call. You can reach me at 516-487-8207 or
by email at lawmed10@yahoo.com. I’m Gerry Oginski, here in New York. Thanks for watching.