‘INNER’ TUBE SUIT
Docs forgot breathing device – for 30 yrs.
His life nearly went down the tubes.
Doctors at Elmhurst Medical Center left a 10-inch breathing tube in a Queens man’s body — and didn’t realize the mistake or retrieve it for an astounding 30 years, according to a lawsuit.
“I just feel like . . . a little angry. Just for the simple fact that they left this inside of me,” the former patient, Rene Remache, 39, told The Post. “It could have been worse than what the outcome was. I thank God I am still here. I have a beautiful daughter that I might not have been raising.”
The twisted tale began when Remache fell out of a window in April 1989 when he was just 6 years old. At the time he was living in Woodside with his grandparents, who came from Ecuador.
He was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital with a skull fracture and was placed on a ventilator and breathing tube. His medical records from the time report he was “agitated” by the tubes and was “pulling” at them. Hours later, those same records say, he “self-extubated.”
Remache says it’s the only time in his life he’s ever received a such a tube and his lawyers are convinced he swallowed some or all of the device while at Elmhurst — and his doctors failed to notice.
Over the years, Remache says he’s suffered from intermittent stomach ailments — often receiving treatment at Elmhurst, but to no avail. Remache, who has long relied on Medicaid for medical coverage, said the hospital never performed any test that could have discovered the tube.
In 2019, a CAT scan at Mt. Sinai Medical Center finally found the culprit — the old tube resting inside his stomach.
The endotracheal tube was finally removed at Maimonides Medical Center on June 24, 2019. Remache had to sue to get the facility to actually hand over the retrieved tube so he could use it as evidence in his malpractice lawsuit against Elmhurst and New York City Health + Hospitals.
In legal filings, the city insists the tube found in Remache in 2019 is different from the one he would have been intubated with.
Health + Hospitals declined to comment, but has repeatedly refused to settle the case, said Peter Traub, an attorney for Remache. A trial date has been set for Oct. 11.