Baby Left Completely Blind After Doctor Removed The Wrong Eye During Surgery

Important preparations are performed prior to a surgical procedure. The medical staff ensures the safety of the patient first by reviewing  all the laboratory and imaging results and the drug allergies that the patient has.

When the patient is cleared to undergo surgery and brought to the operating room, the OR nurses, surgeons, and the anesthesiologist all gather to perform the WHO Safe Surgery Checklist.

The checklist identifies the three stages of a surgical procedure: Before the induction of anesthesia (“sign in”), before the surgeon makes an incision on the site (“time out”), and before the patient is transferred to the recovery room (“sign out”).  This is performed to ensure that the RIGHT PATIENT will undergo the RIGHT PROCEDURE and that the surgeon will make the RIGHT INCISION and remove the RIGHT SPECIMEN.

This is supposed to be  implemented in all hospitals throughout the world to avoid and reduce the major surgical errors that had transpired over the past few years such as leaving a surgical instrument inside the patient’s body or removing the wrong organ.

Unfortunately, another medical mishap occurred, this time at the Medical Unit of High Speciality Mexican Social Security Institute in Ciudad Obregon, in the north-west Mexican state of Sonora.

A 12-month-old child named Fernando Jonathan Valdez Ayala was left completely blind when his doctor, Armando Cisneros Espinoza removed his functional eye during surgery.

The child has a life-threatening tumour on his left eye that’s unresponsive to chemotherapy. The doctor then advised the child’s parents that the next best approach to be able to save the boy’s life is to remove the diseased eye.

But the surgeon took the child's healthy eye out instead.

According to Dr Espinoza, he also saw a mass on the child’s right eye that’s why he decided to remove it. Fernando’s parents were not convinced by the surgeon’s explanation because the tumour and the blind eye remained.

The boy’s mother, Maria Marlene Ayala Quijano said, “They say that they will look at the eye to check that there was a tumour there, but we plan to get an independent test.”

Fernando Valdez Gastelum, the poor child’s father, reported the incident to the police and the hospital had also launched their own private investigation.

The parents have decided to take a legal action against the surgeon.

Dr Armando Cisneros Espinoza has been suspended while the investigation ensues. But the child is now completely blind and his life still hangs in a balance due to the tumour.

H/T: Mirror, WHO