CASE FOR DEFENCE

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 271, 12 August 1938, Page 7

CASE FOR DEFENCE

Damages Claim Against Hospital Board

RADIOLOGISTS’ EVIDENCE

By Telegraph—Press Association.

Auckland, August 11

The case for the deft nee in the retrial of the claim by Mrs. Margaret Barry, St. Ileliers, for £lBl3 damages against the Auckland Hospital Board for alleged negligent or unskilful treatment, was continued before Mr. Justice Fair and a jury in the Supreme Court. Plaintiff’s claim was based on an allegation that at an operation on her in the Auckland Hospital early last year, a swab bad been left in her abdomen, and hail caused her serious illness and suffering until it was removed at an operation in the Mater Misericordiae Hospital on November 27. The hospital board denied any negligence or that any such swab had been found. Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Winter appeared for plaintiff and Mr. V. R. Meredith and Mr. McCarthy represented the defendant board.

Re-examined by Mr. Meredith, Dr. J. Dreadon said that when he had finished the internal part of his operation on plaintiff in the Auckland Hospital he had turned to the sister and asked her if the swab count was correct. The sister assured him that it was so, and he closed the wound.

■ .Sister M. E. Gould, night theatre sister at the Auckland Hospital in January, 11)37, explained the system of double-counting and checking swabs. She was instrument nurse at the operation on Mrs. Barry on January 11, 1937. Records produced showed she had checked the swabs and had her count verified before and after the operation.

Dr. L. A. Speckling said he satisfied himself that all swabs were accounted for after the operation. It was true, witness said, that he had read Mother Mary Agnes’s evidence, given at the first hearing, and had said that, having read it, he had come to the conclusion that what Dr. Bridgman had removed was a diseased ovary. Personally he had come to the conclusion that Dr. Bridgman did not find a swab. Dr. F. J. Gwynne, specialist in radiology, said he had taken the X-ray plates produced for Dr. Bridgman, who had asked him to show the extent and location of a sinus in Mrs. Barry. Dr. Bridgman said afterward that the plates would give him the information he sought. It was not correct that Dr. Bridgman suggested that the plate showed a swab. The method used would not determine the presence of a swab. Measurements of Shadow. At Mr. Sullivan's request, witness made careful measurements of a shadow on one of the X-ray plates and said it represented an object about 14in. long by nearly -Jin. wide. Dr. W. W. Main, radiologist at the Auckland Hospital, produced an X-ray photograph he had had taken of Mrs. Barry. He had been asked to examine for an opaque foreign body and his report was: “No evidence of opaque foreign body.”

Referring to marking said by Dr. Bridgman to represent a swab, witness said he would not expect a foreign body to produce an outline of that shape. He had heard of a pair of forceps having been recovered from an Auckland hospital patient but he knew nothing of the case. Dr. K. MacCormick, senior surgeon at the Auckland Hospital, described the treatment given to Mrs. Barry there last August. “It is no part of my business here,” said witness, “to say whether a swab was or was not found, but the course of Mrs. Barry’s illness and recovery is quite explicable by the ordinary train of the disease, apart from any swab.” Desyl tissue might become practically a “foreign body.” The hearing was adjourned.