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Negligent Hernia Surgery Causes Loss of Testicle From Testicular Torsion

A 48-year-old patient had surgery for his left inguinal hernia in 2007 but lost a testicle because of his surgeon's negligent operation. After a general surgeon performed the open repair, the patient reported pain and a swelling feeling in his scrotum in the recovery room on the day of surgery.

His wife called his surgeon's office the day after surgery to express her concerns about her husband's symptoms from yesterday which had worsened. However, the surgeon simply told her to wait for the routine follow-up visit scheduled for 9 days after surgery.

On the third day after his hernia surgery, the pain and swelling in his scrotum and recent difficulty urinating caused him to go to the emergency room. Again, his symptoms were ignored and he was sent home with nothing more than a scrotal supportive device after ER doctors called his surgeon's office.

The pain and swelling persisted and the next day (the fourth day after surgery), he visited his surgeon's office only to be told after a short exam to return for his routine follow-up scheduled for nine days after surgery. The next day (the fifth day after surgery) brought no relief. The man called his surgeon to complain again, but the surgeon only wrote a new prescription for pain medication.

Finally on the six day after surgery the man went to a different emergency room and was diagnosed with a strangulated left testicle from testicular torsion. The testicle had died from lack of blood flow and had to be removed.

Once a testicle loses blood supply, it will die in 8-24 hours. Testicular death has been known to occur in hernia operations and the surgeon should have informed this patient of that possibility. Regardless, an expert opined in this case that the surgeon was negligent.

In addition, if the surgeon had investigated the man's initial complaints in the recovery room, the testicle may have been saved.

If you have been the victim of a similar injury, you need to know the difference between recurrent hernias and first-time hernias. It is more difficult to prove a lost testicle was the result of negligence if the surgery was to repair a recurrent hernia.

Recurrent hernias exhibit significantly more scar tissue that makes the hernia repair much more difficult and risky. Defendant doctors often win malpractice trials involving recurrent hernia repairs gone wrong.

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