US surgeon removes fully-functional kidney of a patient thinking that it's a Tumour

Posted On:   24 November 2018

Florida, US – 24th November, 2018: Medical negligence is something that we all have heard of. But this incident might lead any patient to think twice before visiting a hospital. In a bewildering incident, a doctor removed a woman’s entire kidney mistaking it to be a cancerous tumour.

The incident took place in 2016 when a woman named Maureen Pacheco was lying in the hospital bed, waiting to be relieved of her back pain when she was actually relieved of her entire kidney. When she woke up from the surgery at Wellington Regional Medical Center in Florida, she was told that the surgeon had something else, the Washington Post reported.

During the spinal procedure, the surgeon, Ramon Vazquez, had allegedly noticed a mass in Pacheco’s pelvis, suspected that it was a cancerous tumor and cut it out according to the administrative complaint filed in court.

Later, it was disclosed that the large chunk of mass wasn’t a tumour but the person’s kidney!

A patient might as well receive a heart attack after finding out this startling piece of information. Vazquez assumed her condition to be that of "gynecologic malignancy" or similar and "clipped, transected and removed (the kidney) in its entirety," State of Florida Department of Health's complaint stated.

The patient did the obvious which is to sue the surgeon. An official complaint was filed on December 15, 2017. Meanwhile, the lawsuit for settled for a ‘nominal amount’ and the surgeon vindicated himself of any fault. Michael Mittelmark, the surgeon’s lawyer told the Post that his client did not own up any responsibility further saying that he did ‘nothing wrong’.

The Wellington medical centre informed that Vazquez had never been an employee at the centre and was an independent physician.

“Wellington Regional took all necessary and appropriate steps to review the circumstances of this most unfortunate incident. In the over-30-year history of Wellington Regional Medical Center, an incident of this nature has never occurred before or since.” the statement from the hospital read further adding that the surgeon was no longer on their medical staff.

Though two functional kidneys is what anyone would prefer, most human beings go on to live normal lives with only one functional kidney. However, in some cases, having only one can lead to problems later in life, such as an increased risk of high blood pressure.

Source: https://www.indiatimes.com/news/world/us-surgeon-removes-fully-functional-kidney-of-a-patient-thinking-that-it-s-a-tumour-356185.html