Foot-sized needle found in surgery patient

  • 2009-01-26
  • TBT staff in cooperation with BNS

VILNIUS- A thirteen year abdominal mysterycame to an end as surgeons discovered a foot-sized instrument left in apatient. The woman, Ms. Baltrusaityte, is suing the offending surgeons for435,000 euro.

 An x-ray in April 2008 revealed the medicalinstrument, a Reverdin suture needle in the 49 year old patient.   

 Theinstrument weighs 276 grams is of impressive size, and is 28 centimeters long.

Ms Baltrusaityte is now able to turn over on her side, somethign she hasbeen unable to do for 13 years.

Experts of the Mykolas Riomeris University Institute of Forensic Medicine deducedthat the object might have entered the abdominal cavity in 1995, when thepatient's gall-bladder was surgically removed.