The family of a Tennessee man who died in 2017, one month after open-heart surgery, is suing TriStar Centennial hospital, alleging the surgeon left a needle inside his body.
According to the Nashville Tennessean, the lawsuit states that after nine hours of surgery, a surgeon rewired John Burns Johnson’s sternum but later discovered a surgical needle was missing. After confirming via x-ray a needle was left inside the 73-year-old’s body, the surgeon reopened Johnson’s chest cavity for another three-hour operation but failed to extract the needle.
The lawsuit says the patient’s health steadily deteriorated over the next 30 days and that Johnson never returned home. The missing needle was eventually removed during an autopsy.
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Daniel joined TriMed’s Chicago editorial team in 2017 as a Cardiovascular Business writer. He previously worked as a writer for daily newspapers in North Dakota and Indiana.