Thursday, October 4, 2007
Jury awards woman $2.4 million after sponge left inside her
PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. (WSVN) -- A jury awarded a woman with $2.4 million after a doctor left a sponge inside her body following her C-section.
Eleven days after Karlene Chambers gave birth to her baby girl Camille on Sept. 11, 2001 at Memorial West Hospital, she had to go back to the operating room to remove something that had been causing her tremendous pain.
Doctors say her gynecologist, Dr. Joseph Becerra, accidentally left a gauze lap pad inside Chambers. In the days it festered inside her it caused a large abscess to rupture, spreading puss inside her abdomen and pelvis. "Very excruciating pain," Chambers said. "Pain you could not imagine. I was in horrible shape, I couldn't walk."
It was eight days after Chambers delivered her baby before an X-ray revealed a special marker inside her abdomen. It was a blue strip attached to the pad designed to alert X-ray technicians that something foreign may have been left in a patient following an operation. At the time, doctors had no idea how large the item inside her was since the 12 x 12-inch pad did not show on the X-ray.
It took doctors another three days to send Chambers back to the operating room to get the pad removed. Becerra is not an employee for Memorial West but was using the hospital's facility. He is no longer practicing medicine. The doctor's insurance is now responsible for $2,418,960.00.
(Copyright 2007 by Sunbeam Television Corp. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
