$265K For Lap Sponge Left Inside Abdomen During Surgery

Surgery

The New York Injury & Malpractice Law Firm, P.C. recovered $265k for a 48-year old female who had a laparotomy pad left inside her small bowel during surgery in Lake Placid, New York.

Six months before the discovery of the laparotomy pad, the patient underwent an operation for the partial removal of her small intestine due to a bowel obstruction. During the operation, the surgeon inadvertently left a laparotomy pad in the small bowel.

Six months following the surgery, the patient complained of nausea, vomiting, cramping and abdominal pain in the left upper quadrant and had a hard time sitting up and was unable to lift. The patient was admitted to a hospital in Essex County, New York. A CT scan of the abdomen and pelvis revealed a radiopaque foreign body in the small bowel loop and five days later, diagnostic laparoscopy revealed a contaminated laparotomy pad in the small bowel. Surgical pathology revealed that the “foreign body” in the small bowel was a “heaped pad of surgical clot gauze…forming a mass measuring 14 x 9 x 5 centimeters and upon expansion, presenting as a square sheet measuring 38 x 38 x 0.3 centimeters.”

The contamained laparotomy pad caused a right-sided abdominal abscess and deep pelvic abscess that required a CT-guided abscess drainage.