Doctors operate on wrong patient following X-ray mistake

Nguyen Hong Hai, 61, a native of Lam Ha District, came to Lam Dong Province’s General Hospital to check his kidney condition on Tuesday.

Hai has suffered kidney stones for over a decade now and had gone through two surgeries to get the stones out.

After the Tet holiday, the condition reemerged so his wife took him to the hospital for treatment on Tuesday morning.

That afternoon, doctors informed Hai and his wife that the X-ray test results revealed that he had a plastic tube around 30 cm long in his abdomen and must be operated on that day to get it out.

The method chosen was endoscopic surgery.

Nguyen Thi Huu, the wife, said her family was "quite confused but as doctors said it was urgent, we eventually agreed to have the operation."

She added that 10 days before that, her husband had an X-ray test at the medical center of Lam Ha District, but the image showed no object inside him.

An X-ray test showing a plastic tube in a patient that doctors at Lam Dong Province’s General Hospital mistook with that of another one. Photo by VnExpress/Khanh Huong

Within 30 minutes of the endoscopic surgery, doctors of Lam Dong Province’s General Hospital could not find any object in Hai’s abdomen.

Only then did they realize they had mistaken Hai’s X-ray with that of another patient.

A representative of the hospital confirmed the incident on Wednesday, adding that the hospital was verifying what went wrong and identifying all staff related to the mistake.

The representative also said they will apologize to Hai and his family.

It is not clear if Hai will request any compensation from the hospital or take legal action against it.

The patient who actually has the plastic tube in his abdomen has now been treated accordingly.