A doctor accidentally removed the wrong eye during an operation, leaving the patient blind. The incident occurred after a major mix-up at a hospital.
A patient was set to be undergoing surgery on his damaged eye at a hospital in Slovakia. However, the doctor accidentally removed the patient's good eye, leaving him blind.
According to North Wales Live, his family are completely devastated. The hospital has now offered the victim and his family psychological care and support to process the horrifying mistake.
Slovakia's TASR news agency reported that a Bratislava University Hospital spokesperson confirmed that the medic who performed the operation was no longer in contact with patients. Slovakia's health supervision authority has now launched an investigation into how such an error could occur.
It comes amid a chaotic time for the Slovak health sector, with an industrial dispute ongoing over pay and working conditions. Slovakia has seen a large departure of medical staff, particularly to the Czech Republic and Austria.
Pressure on those doctors left in the country has increased significantly due to the coronavirus pandemic and last week the LOZ union said around 3,000 doctors were considering quitting unless their work conditions improved. Operating errors are also prevalent in the UK.
Data from 2019 showed that 621 “never events” - blunders so serious they should never happen – had occurred in a 14-month period. That’s the equivalent of nine patients every week, according to data obtained by the PA news agency.
The figures showed doctors had operated on the wrong body parts and left surgical tools (including surgical gloves, chest drains and drill bits) inside patients many times over. One patient had the wrong toe amputated, while another had the wrong part of their colon removed.
Two men were mistakenly circumcised, while a woman had a lump removed from the wrong breast and two others had a biopsy taken from their cervix rather than their colon. A further six women had ovaries removed in error during hysterectomies, plunging them into menopause.
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