Dawn suffered trauma and avoidable surgery after a drain was removed with brute force, which resulted in part of the drain being left inside her, after an emergency hernia operation.
In February last year, Dawn was rushed to hospital after collapsing at home with severe abdominal pain. She was taken to theatre for an emergency surgery to treat a strangulated hernia.
During the operation, a drain was inserted into Dawn’s stomach and she remained in hospital for some time to recover. Unfortunately there were difficulties when Dawn’s drain needed to be removed and in the end, it was removed with brute force, causing Dawn a huge amount of distress.
The drain was discarded after being removed; however, Dawn was still in a significant amount of pain and vomiting frequently. She felt she was discharged from the hospital before she’d fully recovered.
Around a week after returning home, Dawn went back into hospital to be admitted to a ward for observations. She was given pain relief and remained in hospital for a week, with no tests or investigations into the cause of her symptoms.
After raising her concerns to several members of staff, Dawn was re-examined at the end of April and, after explaining to doctors what pain she was experiencing, it was arranged for her to have an urgent CT scan.
Later that day the CT scan revealed a 4cm long piece of drainage pipe had been left inside Dawn’s abdomen during the initial operation to repair her hernia. She was taken to theatre the next day to have the pipe removed.
Dawn was taken to intensive care after the operation before a week later being transferred to the High Dependency Unit, only to need to go back to intensive care the following day. She remained in hospital until her condition had gradually improved enough for her to be well enough to return home.
Dawn decided to contact Fletchers to bring a claim against the hospital for the medical negligence caused. We investigated Dawn’s claim and obtained expert evidence before the Trust admitted Dawn had undergone avoidable surgery to remove the remnant of drain, which caused pain and suffering. We acted on behalf of Dawn to negotiate an out of court settlement of £6750.
Hannah Ashcroft, a Solicitor within our medical negligence team, handled Dawn’s case and said:
I am delighted to have secured this settlement for Dawn, who has suffered unnecessarily as a result of mistakes made by the Defendant Trust. It is hoped that this will not happen to future patients as a result of this case and I wish Dawn all the best for the future.
We hope now that Dawn’s case has settled she’ll be able to look towards putting the traumatic experience behind her and focusing on getting back to her old self as much as possible.
From start to finish we were kept in the loop at all times and we were very happy with the treatment we received from Hannah. Her thoughtfulness and sympathy were very much appreciated given the terrible trauma I experienced
Dawn, medical negligence victim
