A woman who underwent surgery woke up with one of her kidneys removed

When Maureen Pacheco went to the hospital in April 2016, she was told that she would be operated on, but that she also had a kidney removed.

According to the court's minutes, Pacheco, who joined the Wellington Regional Medical Center in Florida to merge some vertebrae in her lower back, was not consulted about the plan change. Washington Post reported.

The problem would have been when, during the back surgery, the surgeon Ramon Vazquez confused his kidney with a cancerous tumor in Pacheco's pelvis and cut it, the Palm Beach Post reported, citing a trial that was settled in September.

A month later, a hospital pathologist confirmed that the tumor was actually a pelvic kidney, the Palm Beach Post reported. The pelvic kidneys refer to organs that have not "managed to climb back to their normal position above the waist" during fetal development, according to the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Hospital for Children in Chicago .

According to the lawsuit, Vazquez was not consulted on the two MRIs performed before the procedure, in which the kidney was clearly visible, depending on the point of sale.

"As you can imagine, when a person undergoes a back operation, she will never expect her to wake up and that she will be told, when she just woke up anesthesia, that one of his kidneys was unnecessarily removed, "Pacheco's lawyer, Donald J. Ward, said the Palm Beach Post.

Vazquez's lawyer stated at the point of sale that the complaint "was settled on his behalf for a token amount," adding that his client had not "acknowledged his responsibility in accepting this settlement."

the Washington Post reports that Vazquez, a licensed general surgeon, has no record of discipline on the state medical board record.

RELATED: Brothers and sisters aged 4 and 6 diagnosed with brain tumors just 2 weeks apart: "We fell in tears"

In a statement, the Wellington Regional Medical Center declared to the Washington Post that Vazquez "is not and has never been an employee" and that at the time of the proceedings, he was working as an independent doctor.

"Dr. Vazquez is no longer part of the Wellington Regional medical staff, "the statement said. "Wellington Regional has taken all necessary and appropriate steps to examine the circumstances of this most deplorable incident. In the more than 30-year history of the Wellington Regional Medical Center, no such incident has occurred before or since. "

ASSOCIATED VIDEO: A man learns that his wife is a kidney match with baseball cards

According to a complaint filed by the Florida Department of Health in December, the "unauthorized procedure" was "medically unnecessary" because it was "not related" to the lumbar fusion that Pacheco was to receive that day.

The complaint also states that Vazquez made a "presumptive diagnosis" and did not perform "mass biopsy … considering the potential malignancy".

As part of the complaint, the Florida Department of Health has asked the Board of Medicine to revoke or suspend Vazquez's license, put him on probation or fine him.