For most women, if they miss their period they take a pregnancy test. If this turns up negative and they are still experiencing strange symptoms, they might go to the doctor for blood tests. Along with the possibility of an ultra sound, these tests will often confirm whether a woman is pregnant or not. It’s a simple diagnosis, right?
Unfortunately, if you believe that this doesn’t result in amisdiagnosis then you would be wrong because it’s something that recently happened to a New Zealand woman. And although her case happened thousands of miles away from residents here in Arizona, it does stand as a perfect example of what can happen when a medical professional is negligent at their duties and fails to provide a patient with the right diagnosis for their symptoms.
The woman’s case began several months ago when she started experiencing pain in her abdomen. After six pregnancy tests, three scans and two blood tests appeared to have confirmed that she was not, in fact, pregnant, doctors agreed that removing her ovaries would alleviate her pain. But it wasn’t until she had gone under for surgery that doctors learned how wrong they were.
According to reports, doctors discovered their mistake during surgery when they found a living, breathing 9-pound baby boy wedged in the woman’s back. Realizing their error, the baby was immediately delivered via an emergency C-section.
But how could a mistake such as this have happened? As was hinted at by one doctor, it would have taken several instances of negligence for this mistake to have happened. He noted that even an at-home test that delivered a false negative would have been caught with blood tests. “The only way you might miss that is if you were looking at the wrong scan or if the person doing the scan didn’t know how to use the equipment properly,” the doctor explained.
Source: Medical Daily, “Woman Has Surgery To Remove Ovaries, Doctors Find A 9-Pound Baby Inside,” Dana Dovey, June 17, 2014