US sued by army vet after discovering abandoned scalpel in his pelvis
A 61-year-old Army veteran has recently experienced an unsettling, real-life game of "Operation" that has turned into a legal battle with the U.S.
According to a recent article by MassLive.com, Glenford Turner filed a lawsuit Jan. 11 after finding an abandoned five-inch scalpel in his pelvis from a surgery he had for prostate cancer in 2013. Turner and his wife are expecting more than $1 million in any settlement from a federally funded Veterans Affairs hospital in Connecticut where his 2013 surgery took place.
The x-ray image of the scalpel in Turner's pelvis has gained national attention. It was taken when Turner returned to the same hospital in March 2017 with complaints of dizziness and severe abdominal pain after undergoing a preclinical MRI exam.
"It's perplexing to me how they could be so incompetent that a scalpel that really should only be on the exterior of your body not only goes into the body but then is sewn into the body," Turner's lawyer, Joel Faxon, told NPR in an interview. "It's a level of incompetence that's almost incomprehensible."
See below for more information and Glenford Turner's x-ray image.
A recent graduate from Dominican University (IL) with a bachelor’s in journalism, Melissa joined TriMed’s Chicago team in 2017 covering all aspects of health imaging. She’s a fan of singing and playing guitar, elephants, a good cup of tea, and her golden retriever Cooper.