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SUPPLEMENT TO 

"A VERDICT THAT’S HARD TO SWALLOW"

KAMBAT, et al. v. ST. FRANCIS HOSPITAL et al.

Evidence: 

The pad removed from decedent was the same type and size as those supplied to St. Francis Hospital in 1986.

The pads were commonly used during hysterectomies.

The pads were provided only to hospitals with operating rooms, where patients would not have access to them.

Plaintiffs called three expert witnesses. Two experts testified that the pad was both partially inside and partially outside decedent's bowel. A third testified that the pad was completely inside the bowel, but it had originally been left outside the bowel, in the peritoneal cavity, where it caused an abscess to develop outside the bowel, which in turn created an artificial opening through which the pad had migrated into the bowel.

Defendants introduced evidence that standard procedures were followed during the operation.

That the number laparotomy pads used and removed were counted several times.

Defendants' experts opined that the pad had not been left inside decedent but, rather, that she had swallowed it.

According to defendants' witnesses, laparotomy pads were frequently left in places accessible to patients in hospitals; decedent suffered from chronic depression; overuse of sleeping pills could suppress the gag reflex and permit her to swallow the pad; and the human gastrointestinal tract would allow the pad to pass to the small bowel.

Plaintiffs' expert witnesses, by contrast, agreed that it would be anatomically impossible to swallow the laparotomy pad or for a swallowed pad to reach the bowel.

In the first trial, the Plaintiff had burden to prove that Defendant left the pad in the patient.  The appellate court disagreed; therefore, in the second trial, the Defendant had the burden to prove that it did not leave the pad during surgery.

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