Deborah Craven, 60, claims Ricarod Quarrie, MD, a trainee and thoracic surgeon at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Conneticut, extracted her seventh left rib instead of the eighth, on which there was a cancerous lesion. Ms. Craven also claims she was deceived about the error. Anthony Kim, MD, assistant professor in thoracic surgery at Yale, supervised the surgery. The hospital has acknowledged that an error was made, according to the New Haven Register.
Ms. Craven alleges that after the surgery, she awoke to pain near the surgical site. After an x-ray, the plaintiff claims that her surgeons discovered a portion of the seventh rib was removed instead of the eighth rib. The cancerous rib and the metal coils used to mark it remained inside Ms. Craven's thoracic cavity. A second procedure was then deemed necessary. The plaintiff says Dr. Quarrie was dishonest about the nature of the error and informed Ms. Craven that not enough of the eighth rib was removed, which meant they had to operate again. Ms. Craven reportedly requested that Dr. Quarrie not be involved in the second surgery. According to the plaintiff, he assisted Dr. Kim.
Ms. Craven's attorney, Joel T. Faxon of Faxon Law Group in New Haven, Conn., said in the New Haven Register, "The cover-up is worse than the crime here. People make mistakes, we all know that, but you've got to own up to your mistakes."
The attorney also claimed that had Dr. Quarrie been forthright about the error and had Dr. Kim performed the second surgery without Dr. Quarrie's assistance, there would likely be no lawsuit.
A statement from the Yale-New Haven Hospital relayed by the Register, reads, "Yale-New Haven Hospital and Yale Medical Group are committed to providing the safest and highest quality of care possible. However, even in the best organizations, medical errors may occur. When they do, our goal is to acknowledge them, learn from them and ensure that we minimize any chance that they ever occur again...with respect to the case of Ms. Craven, we recognized that an error was made, we informed and apologized to the patient, and we immediately reported it to the Connecticut Department of Public Health."
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