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Maureen Pacheco who, at the age of 51, went to the Wellington Regional Medical Center in April 2016 to merge the bones of her lower back because she was suffering from pain caused by a car accident of years earlier.
She left the hospital with one less kidney.
According to a complaint filed in December by the Florida Department of Health against Dr. Ramon Vazquez, a West Palm Beach doctor, Vazquez unnecessarily removed his pelvic kidney from the left side.
According to the complaint, Vazquez "noted a pelvic mass and posed a presumptive diagnosis of gynecological malignancy, lymphoma and / or other metastatic disease".
He then proceeded to the elimination of the "mass" in its entirety, without prior biopsy to determine the malignancy. But the mass was not a mass, it was Pacheco's kidney.
And Vazquez was not even his surgeon.
He was there "to cut it so that his orthopedic surgeons can perform the delicate operation of the back," reported the Palm Beach Post. She had just met him shortly before being taken to the operating room.
Pacheco's complaint was settled in September for "a nominal amount," Vazquez lawyer Michael Mittelmark told the Washington Post. Mittelmark added that Vazquez "did not admit his responsibility and did not think he had done anything wrong.
The confusion arose from the fact that Pacheco was suffering from a rather rare condition called "pelvic kidney", which occurs during the development of the fetus, when it fails to reach its normal position.
Thus, his kidney was not in the usual upper abdominal area, but was functioning fully, even though it was in the pelvic area, reported the Washington Post. According to Ann & Robert H. Lurie Hospital in Chicago, if there are no associated symptoms, such as obstruction or reflux, no treatment is needed. Many patients simply live with this anomaly.
According to her trial, two MRIs before Pacheco's operation showed she had a pelvic kidney, reported the Palm Beach Post.
Vazquez is a general surgeon in West Palm Beach. According to the state medical council, he has an active license with no record of discipline on file. But as a result of this incident, the Ministry of Health has now asked the Medical Committee to consider suspending or revoking Vazquez's medical license, placing him on probation or imposing an administrative fine, among other measures. "remedial".
A spokesman for the Wellington Regional Medical Center said in a statement to Inside Edition: "Dr. Vazquez is not and has never been employed by the Wellington Regional Medical Center. Dr. Vazquez was an independent physician who enjoyed the privileges of medical staff at the Wellington Regional Area and at other hospitals in Palm Beach County. "
Vazquez, continues the statement, "is no longer part of Wellington Regional Medical Staff" and that the hospital, located at 10101 Forest Hill Boulevard, "has taken all necessary and appropriate steps to review the circumstances of this very unfortunate incident … In the last 30 years of the Wellington Regional Medical Center, no incident of this nature has occurred before or since. "
Vazquez earned his medical degree from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York, according to the US News and World Report. According to the Florida Board of Medicine, Vazquez "has an active, non-disciplinary license to file," the Washington Post reported.
A 2006 study conducted by the AHRQ on site-based surgeries evaluated nearly 3 million operations between 1985 and 2004 and found a rate of 1 in 112,994 cases of site-specific surgery. The authors of the study "suggested that the average large hospital could be involved in such an event every five to ten years, a rate ten times less frequent than that of foreign bodies preserved".
"Few medical errors are as vivid and terrifying as those involving patients who have had surgery on a bad part of the body," says the Agency for Health Research and Quality on its website. .
Follow @HowardCohen on Twitter.
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