A 44-year-old woman must be compensated by the Institut Català de Salut (ICS) for an “untimely maneuver” in a caesarean section performed at the Vall d’Hebrón hospital that ended up leading to bleeding that forced the removal of her uterus. The patient was left sterile and now she must be corrected with almost 90,000 euros.
It was G. S.’s second pregnancy. The patient, who was 35 years old at the time, appeared at the Barcelona hospital on June 27, 2014, according to the sentence to which La Vanguardia has had access. She was 43 weeks pregnant and her water had broken. After administering epidural anesthesia and with the baby in the cephalic fetal position, she reached full dilation but the labor “stalled”. The baby was not coming out. So the medical team decided to perform a caesarean section. It would be the second for the patient, who had already given birth to her first child like this.
During the intervention “a three-centimeter dehiscence of the previous scar was observed” (that is, a small opening in the scar from the previous cesarean section) and after the removal of the baby there was “significant bleeding” that an attempt was made to stop with sutures. But given the “impossibility” to control the bleeding, a hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) and a reimplantation of the ureter in the bladder had to be performed.
The baby was born healthy, but as a result of the intervention, the patient required several transfusions and ended up in the ICU. “I have spent many years with psychological treatment. When I woke up from the coma I had a post-traumatic shock of seeing myself plugged in â€, the patient tells this medium, who, despite the situation she experienced, points out that the humane treatment was good.
Almost a year later, in June 2015, G.S. and her husband decided to file a claim for patrimonial liability against the ICS through their lawyer José Aznar Cortijo for the damages derived from the health care provided. In 2017, the ICS rejected the claim but the Contentious-Administrative Court 16 of Barcelona agreed with the patient and now the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) has confirmed the sentence against the ICS. The Court considers the damage caused to the patient “disproportionate”, who was left sterile and remained in a coma for several days, and ensures that there was a “lack of professional rigor” after completing a delivery “that should have occurred normally” in a “risky intervention”. which caused the removal of the uterus and, as a consequence, left it “sterile for life”.
The sentence considers that there is a “cause-effect relationship between the damage suffered and the deficient assistance provided” and ensures that there was a “lack of diligence” because given the conditions of admission of the patient “it should already lead to suspicion that if she waited for labor with an attempted vaginal delivery, the risk of suture dehiscence from the previous scar was high.
The entire situation experienced caused significant psychological damage to the patient, who had the intention of becoming a mother again to go “for the girlâ€. A wish that was cut short after losing the womb. “After the years you resign yourself,” concludes the patient, who has two children aged 13 and 8.
