A surgeon left 16 items in the body of a man after performing surgery on him for prostate cancer. Sadly, the patient died from cancer last year. Now his family is seeking monetary damages in the amount of approximately $120,000. According to a Jan. 15, 2013 report by The Daily Mail, the unfortunate senior citizen was 74-year-old Dirk Schroeder of Germany.
The sad story takes an even more shocking twist. The Hanover, Germany hospital where the man's surgery was performed maintains that the long list of items found in the ailing man's body somehow arrived there post-surgery. The hospital has not commented on how the objects may have ended up inside Schroeder after his surgery.
Allegedly, the surgeon left 16 items in the body of Dirk Schroeder including a roll of gauze, a piece of a surgical mask, a needle, a compress and multiple swabs. Although the man died in 2012, it was cancer, not the items left inside his body, that caused his demise. However, his family claims that the surgical mishap caused the man great pain, which is not surprising given the number of foreign objects inside his body.
Although it made headlines when this surgeon left 16 items in a body after surgery, this story is not unique. Unfortunately, there have been many reported incidents of surgical tools and sponges being left behind after surgery. See the video at the top of the page for the story of a woman whose surgeon left behind a rather sizable surgical tool after surgery.
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