The Shariah Medical Commission has slapped a fine of SR70,000 on a private hospital for leaving a pair of surgical scissors inside a woman's abdomen during an operation three years and four months ago. The tool stayed inside the woman for that period. She had come to the hospital for liposuction and a stomach skin-tightening operation. Having refused the patient's demands for SR100-million in compensation, the commission ordered a payment of SR40,000 of the fine to the woman and for the remaining amount to be transferred to the state treasury. The commission, which is headed by a judge and is responsible for processing and issuing verdicts in medical cases, did not charge the surgeon and nursing team, who are all Egyptians. No reasons were given for this. However, one of the commission's members has objected to the ruling that has absolved the surgeon and his assistants. The member signed the verdict but made a handwritten note on the document that the doctor and assistants should be punished. The commission had previously summoned the surgeon and nurses and they had all denied that they left the scissors inside the patient. They said another hospital was responsible for this, where the woman had corrective surgery following the first operation. However, an investigating committee formed by the minister of health, had found out the serial number and manufacturer on the scissors indicated that it was from the first hospital. The commission said its ruling and compensation was based on a Cabinet decision which determined the payout for a disability when 10 to 80 percent of a person's intestines is lost in an operation. When the scissors was removed from the woman, she had some of her large intestine removed also. The woman, known only as SZ, had her first surgery in 2005 at a hospital located in the center of the city. Two months later, she had another one in another hospital to correct the first operation. Shortly afterwards she started having seizures and her husband took her to several hospitals, and later to Ruqia performers, but no one could determine what was wrong. More than three years later, when she fainted one day, her husband took her to Jeddah's King Fahd Military Hospital where she was x-rayed. It was then discovered that a surgical scissors was settled in her large intestine.
