ALLEGED NEGLIGENCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 189, 12 August 1938, Page 8

ALLEGED NEGLIGENCE

CLAIM BY HOSPITAL PATIENT SAYS SWAB WAS LEFT IN BODY'. [ Per Press A isocis. lion. J AUCKLAND, Aug. 11. The case for the defence in the retrial of a claim by Mrs. Margaret Barry was continued. Re-examined by Mr. Meredith, Dr. J. Reardon said that when he had finished the internal part of his operation on the plaintiff in the Auckland Hospital he had turned to a 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, 1937, explained the system of double counting and checking swabs. She was the instrument nurse at the operation on Mrs. Barry on January 11, 1937. Records produced showed that she had checked the swabs and had her count verified before and after the operation. Dr. L. A. Spedding said that he satisfied himself that all the swabs were accounted for after the operation. It was true, witness said, that he had read Mother Agnes’ evidence given at the first hearing, and had said that, having read It, he had come to a conclusion that what Dr. Bridgman had removed was a diseased ovary. Personally, he had come to a conclusion that Dr. Bridgman did not find a swab. Dr. F. J. Gwynne, specialist in radiology, said that he had taken X-ray plates (produced) for Dr. Bridgman, who had asked him to show the extent and location of the sinus in Mrs. Barry. Dr. Bridgman said afterwards that the plates would give him the information he sought. It was not correct that Dr. Bridgman suggested that the method used would not determine the presence of a swab. At Mr. Sullivan's witness made careful measurements of the shadow on one of the X-ray plates, and said it represented an object about 11 inches long by nearly half an inch 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 an opaque foreign body.” Referring to the 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 ffom 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.” Dead tissue might become practically a “foreign body.” The hearing was adjourned.