A woman complaining of chronic pain discovered that she had a surgical tool the size of a dinner plate inside her abdomen more than a year after delivering her baby via cesarean section, health officials said.
An extra large Alexis retractor, or AWR — a device used to draw back the edges of a wound during surgery that can measure 6 inches in diameter — was left inside the mother’s body after the birth of her baby at Auckland City Hospital in 2020, according to a report by New Zealand’s Health and Disability commissioner.
“It should be noted that the retractor, a round, soft tubal instrument of transparent plastic fixed on two rings, is a large item, about the size of a dinner plate,” the newly-released report read. “Usually, it would be removed after closing the uterine incision.”
The patient suffered agonizing pain for 18 months, until the AWR device was discovered on an abdominal CT scan and finally removed in 2021 — after multiple check-ups that failed to identify the problem.
Te Whatu Ora Te Toka Tumai Auckland, formerly known as the Auckland District Health Board, previously denied that it had failed to exercise reasonable skill and care towards the patient, pointing to “known error rates.”
Read more at https://nypost.com/2023/09/05/dinner-plate-sized-surgical-tool-left-inside-womans-body/
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