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Case Study: Failure to Diagnose Post-Operative Infection

Doctors' failure to order appropriate tests despite signs of infection required doctors to remove part of a woman's muscle and skin tissue when such removal would not have been necessary had doctors performed the appropriate tests.

A middle-aged woman went to her local emergency room and was diagnosed with stress incontinence, which is when one loses the ability to control their bladder during physical movements like laughing, coughing, sneezing or even exercise.

Doctors performed surgery to treat her. After surgery, many people are at risk of developing infections which can be life threatening. Some people are more at risk than others for developing post-operative infections. This patient had diabetes which is one of the conditions that elevates someone's risk of post-op infection.

To guard against post-op infection, the doctors in this case administered IV antibiotics and oral antibiotics. However, the doctors discharged the woman four days after surgery even though she was experiencing bladder pressure and could not urinate.

Eleven days later, the patient had to be readmitted to the emergency room because she had severe abdominal pain that could only be relieved by cutting a drain in an abscess that had developed near her pubic bone and extended all the way to her groin causing pyomyocitis. Abscesses are puss-filled areas of swelling and pyomyocitis is an infection in the muscle.

For an entire month afterward, the woman was forced to undergo the same procedure of cutting a drainage hole in her. During that month, IV antibiotics were given but no would culture test was
performed to discover what type of bacteria was causing the infection.

Medical experts later stated that a wound culture test was what any reasonable doctor should have done knowing that the drainage included both serous fluid and blood, the woman had an abnormally high white blood cell count, which indicates serious infection, and the woman was a diabetic which made her prone to infection.

Knowing what kind of organism was causing the infection would have saved this woman much pain, uneccessary surgery and medical expense because the bacteria turned out to be resistant to the anti-biotics the doctors were giving her.

The one month delay caused the woman to suffer mutliple procedures that removed dead and infected skin, muscle and other tissue as well as an additional abscess in her thigh and impairment of the rectus muscle which facilitates breathing and also supports the spine. All of these problems could have been avoided by simply ordering the appropriate test.

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