UK – 7th May, 2019: A woman's unborn twins died after medics allegedly mistook her pregnancy for cancer and the treatment killed her babies.
Mum-of-two Serpil Baga, 35, went to a local hospital with complaints of pain and internal bleeding, and was diagnosed with a tumour on one of her ovaries, which was removed in June last year.
The surgery was considered a success at the time, and Ms Baga spent the next three months attending regular checkups and treatment.
In September last year, she was diagnosed with high levels of the human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) hormone which usually appears in cases of womb cancer or pregnancy.
Ms Baga, from Sakarya province in Turkey, claims doctors believed that the high hormone level was down to growing cancer cells and did not even bother to test her for pregnancy.
She started chemotherapy and continued with the treatment until December when she reportedly realised that she was producing breast milk.
Ms Baga claimed that the doctors told her this was normal and possibly due to hormonal changes due to the chemotherapy.
She was then reportedly diagnosed with two tumours on her womb which measured 12 and 19 centimetres in length.
Several days before Ms Baga was due to undergo surgery to remove the two ‘tumours’, she started to bleed heavily and miscarried twins, local media reported.
The mum and her husband are now suing the hospital and doctors for negligence.
She claims doctors never told her that she should avoid becoming pregnant after the first tumour was removed in case the cancer returned.
Her husband Muhammet Baga said: “I went back to the doctor and asked him how he didn’t know my wife was pregnant. He said to me ‘children are unimportant, what matters is that your wife is alive’.
"Regardless of whether it was deliberately or not, I think this is a case of medical negligence, because they did not do all the necessary checkups, so I will not forgive them.
"We have a disabled son, we left him in the care of other people for three months, so I could take my wife to the hospital every day for chemotherapy.
“Instead of receiving the fantastic news that we would be expecting twins, my healthy wife was misdiagnosed with cancer and treated for nothing.
“I have started the legal procedure and we hope that the doctors will be punished accordingly.”
Souirce: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/mums-unborn-twins-die-after-15007965