Wrong Site Surgery Death Yields $21 Million Jury Verdict
Bimla Nayyar, an 81-year-old Michigan woman entered Oakwood Hospital in January 2012 for a procedure on her jaw. However, instead of operating on her jaw, surgeons performed brain surgery. She never recovered and died two months later. According to the Detroit Free Press, “Nayyar had been admitted to Oakwood Hospital in Dearborn in January 2012 for a procedure to treat her bilateral jaw displacement. She was already in precarious health and recovering from a heart attack she had suffered in October. But after mixing up her CT scan results with those of another patient, hospital staff thought that Nayyar had bleeding in her brain and needed immediate surgery, according to the family’s lawsuit. She was wheeled into an operating room, the lawsuit said, where five holes were drilled into her head and the right side of her skull was sawed out and replaced.”
The hospital, which never disclosed the error until evidence was presented at trial, was found negligent by the jury.
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