Medical instrument left inside Quebec woman

Foot-long piece of metal left in was ‘a mistake’

MONTREAL • Quebec's health minister is blaming human error after a footlong medical instrument was forgotten inside a woman who had a hysterectomy at a Montreal hospital last March.

But Gaetan Barrette urged patients Wednesday to not lose confidence in the province's health system and the surgery performed in its operating rooms.

“There will never be zero mistakes and here you have a situation which proves there are never zero mistakes,” he told reporters in Quebec City.

But Barrette pointed out there's a standard procedure that's followed when it comes to an operation.

“When the surgery starts, everything that's used is counted — everything — and at the end, there's another count to make sure nothing is left inside a patient,” he said.

But in the operation involving Sylvie Dube, the team that did the checking “clearly made a mistake,” he said.

Dube told Radio-Canada she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer last October and underwent chemotherapy over the winter before the March 14 hysterectomy.

Dube complained of pain the day after the operation — not in the abdomen but in a shoulder.

“It was like being stabbed with a knife,” she said.

Her doctor and nurses at Notre-Dame Hospital told her it was normal a hysterectomy would cause pain elsewhere in her body.

She began taking antiinflammatory medication but the pain increased.

Discouraged, she went to the hospital's emergency room on May 22 and had a scan that revealed a metal object in her body.

“They told me, 'We see a 30-centimetre metal plate in your stomach'," Dube said. “I said, 'I don't have a metal plate in my abdomen.”

The medical report indicated a “flexible blade,” 33 centimetres long, had been left inside her abdomen during her surgery in March.

The instrument was removed May 25.

“It's an unfortunate event and no one is happy with that, but it's impossible to have zero complications,” Barrette said.

The network that oversees Notre-Dame Hospital, the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CHUM), has launched an investigation.

“It's something that remains exceptional,” Dr. Charles Bellavance, director of medical and university affairs at the CHUM, told the CBC.

THEY TOLD ME, ‘WE SEE A 30CENTIMETRE METAL PLATE IN YOUR STOMACH.’

JACQUES BOISSINOT / THE CANADIAN PRESS Quebec Health Minister Gaetan Barrette said Wednesday that, while there will never be “zero mistakes” at hospitals, patients should remain confident in their safety.