At YCMH, negligent doc leaves bandage thread behind during Caesarean section

Management says probe is on; doctor may be fined.

PUTTING THE Yashwantrao Chavan Memorial Hospital in poor light once again, a gynaecologist’s negligence has come to the fore with a 30-year-old patient complaining of a haematoma after a Caesarean section conducted upon her in October, leading the health department of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation to initiate an immediate probe.

Barely a week ago, The Indian Express had highlighted the plight of the hospital with patients being forced to sit on the floor and wait for doctors, and how a doctor from this hospital was let off lightly after he performed a surgery on a patient’s wrong leg.

In the latest case, which has come to light on Saturday, the woman, who had undergone a Caesarean section in October, started to complain of pain in the lower abdomen a few days after her surgery. Her family brought her to the hospital for a review. After she underwent a CT-scan, doctors noticed a blood clot that was apparently formed by the threads of a bandage that was left inside during the C-Section operation. A second operation was performed on the patient to remove the thread, which had turned into a blood clot resulting in pus formation.

On Sunday, YCMH superintendent Dr Manoj Deshmukh said the woman had developed haematoma. “A haematoma is a localised collection of blood outside the blood vessels. It is a type of internal bleeding either due to existing clots or clots that are forming.”

Dr Deshmukh said another surgery was performed and the pus was drained out. “The patient has been discharged after she recovered completely,” he said.
As for the action against the guilty doctor, Dr Deshmukh said a probe is underway and action will be taken based on the findings. Dr Deshmukh said if the doctor was found guilty, she will be fined Rs 100 or a maximum of Rs 500. Asked why such a paltry sum for such negligence, Dr Deshmukh said, he was helpless. “It is as per the norms, I cannot do much about it.”

Like the expecting mother who developed an infection after the surgery, a nine-year-old boy who had fallen on his head also developed pus last month when a doctor put wrong stitches. He too underwent a minor corrective surgery.
Meanwhile, on Sunday too, a patient was found complaining that there was no attending doctor to check on the IV (intravenous). An elderly woman, Mumtaz Shaikh, complained that a doctor disappeared after putting her on a drip incorrectly, resulting in her arm bleeding profusely. “My entire hand was soaked in blood and there was blood on the bedsheet too. When I sought help, the staff rushed forth and corrected the IV,” she said. When health chief, Dr Anil Roy, was alerted, he asked Dr Deshmukh to take corrective steps immediately.

Reacting to such frequent incidents of negligence and lackadaisical attitude of staff, Dr Deshmukh said, he was initiating tough measures to ensure that doctors and nurses were taking utmost care in discharging their duty.

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When The Indian Express took up the issues with Municipal Commissioner Rajeev Jadhav, he said, he knew there were too many problems with the YCMH functioning. “I had been busy getting the civic schools in order. I have been getting complaints about the YCMH. I had said last week that I would hold an urgent meeting, but could not do so. This week, I will surely hold a meeting to look into the matter,” he said.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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