Navi Mumbai docs baffled after patient reacts to anaesthetic drug by passing dark green urine
MUMBAI: In one of only three cases ever recorded, a patient at a Navi Mumbai hospital reacted to a common anaesthetic drug by passing dark green urine. “We have come across the cases in medical literature but not in the professional career,” said Dr Jitendra Bhawalkar, Dean of the DY Patil Medical College and Research Centre in Pune. He said the occurrence of such incidents is “less than 1%”.
When student doctors Priyam Choudhury, Ashutosh Mahapatra and Sahil Sanghi operated on a victim of a road accident who was brought to Navi Mumbai’s DY Patil Medical College, they had no idea their patient was about to go green, but in an unnatural way.
The accident victim, a 30-year-old man, had a fractured arm and the doctors decided to install a metal plate to support the bone.
This would require surgery and as per procedure, the patient underwent a series of routine tests to confirm he could be put under general anaesthesia safely. The surgery was successful, but two or three hours later, when the patient was recovering in the postoperative ward, the nursing staff were alarmed to find his urine was a dark green colour, similar to spinach juice.
The baffled medical personnel of DY Patil Medical College ran a battery of tests on the patient, but all the results were normal, despite the persistently green urine. There was no problem with the patient’s renal and liver functions, and neither was there any evidence of a urinary tract infection
(UTI).
Dr Hemal Shah, head of the nephrology department at Mumbai’s Saifee Hospital and joint secretary of Mumbai Nephrology Group, confirmed that green urine is extremely rare.
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