Patient Compensated After Doctors Operate on Wrong Side of Heart

A heart surgery on a 51-year old man at an NHS hospital in Britain went horribly wrong as the surgeons operated on the wrong side of the heart and then tried to deny that any error took place. Steve Edwards underwent the surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary for a third time to regularize his heart beat but midway through the operation, he was woken up from the anesthesia with the doctors telling him that a pacemaker needs to be fitted.

Edwards had no idea that the surgeons had made a mistake for a few weeks after the surgery and when he contacted the hospital regarding his doubts, they initially denied that any error had taken place.

Later on Robert Woolley, the chief executive of University Hospitals Bristol, sent a letter to Edwards, admitted that slippery equipment meant that the surgeons had operated on the wrong side of his heart and had to fit a pacemaker to keep the heart beating. Edwards was also paid six-figure compensation and the hospital revealed that further checks were made in order to make sure that a similar mistake did not occur in future.

“Every seven years I will need to be opened up so that the batteries can be replaced in my pacemaker and I may have to have a new one in time. Both of these things pose risks as I get older. This whole thing affected my self-esteem and traumatized me”, Edwards said.

Source-Medindia