Doctors face lawsuit over botched operation

Dr Howard Deosaran, Medical Director of TrinCay Medical Services

(CNS): A woman who sustained a lacerated bowel during a routine operation to remove a cyst from her ovaries is suing three doctors and the medical centre that employs them for negligence. The local Bodden Town woman, who is 50 years old, was operated on in March 2013 at the George Town hospital by Howard Deosaran and Zol Tan Szucs, who are employed by Trincay Medical Services Ltd, according to the writ filed in the Grand Court. During the procedure her bowl was allegedly cut and sutured by the surgeons but the patient was never informed.

After what the doctors had said was a routine surgery, she was discharged the same day with various medications, but the woman claims no one mentioned the damage to her bowel. When she became increasingly unwell that night and the next day, she went to see the surgeons, who referred her to a third doctor, Francisco Martinez, who is  included in the suit.

Although in severe pain, unable to walk with a stiffness all over her body and a distended stomach, the physician diagnosed wind, gave her an injection and told her she would be better in a couple of days, according to the suit. But that night her symptoms became worse, with more pain, vomiting and further distention of her abdomen. The next morning she returned to the medical centre in Camana Bay, where she was sent to the Cayman Islands Hospital A&E in George Town.

During this time the woman claims she remained unaware that her bowel had been torn and stitched during the surgery or that the doctors had encountered any unexpected complications during the procedure.

Once at the Cayman Islands Hospital, she was diagnosed with peritonitis resulting from the perforation in her bowel and leakage of faecal matter into her abdomen. After an emergency surgery by Dr Ajit Mathew to repair the perforation and clean her abdominal cavity to save her life, she learned of the inch-long tear to her bowel, which, according to the suit, had not been adequately repaired during her original procedure.

Following the emergency surgery, the patient was fitted with a colostomy bag and was admitted to the Critical Care Unit. She was in hospital for 12 days before being allowed home. It was several months before the colostomy bag was surgically removed, when she was once again admitted to hospital and suffered further pain and discomfort. The following year she was diagnosed with an incisional hernia in the area, which also required corrective surgery.

Listing the seriousness of the condition she developed, the pain, the discomfort, the embarrassment of the colostomy bag and the negligence of the three doctors and the medical centre that employed them, the woman is seeking general and special damages as well as the cost of her legal action.